Tober Building

A four-story Gothic Revival loft faced entirely in ivory terra cotta, small and almost unaltered. Over the storefront, where the number 1214 is lettered in the transom, runs a band of five Tudor-arched windows filled with leaded glass, each centered on a painted shield or roundel, under a frieze of foliated bosses. Above, narrow molded terra-cotta piers divide the front into five bays, and the spandrels between floors are paneled with shields. The top is a crenelated parapet with tracery and slender spirelets, which rise against the tall plain side walls of its neighbors. The back on the alley is plain red brick, four stories, with a stepped parapet.

Tom P. Barnett designed this small Gothic loft in 1918. Built St. Louis records the Erker Optical Company as its original tenant. The Tober name it carries may come from the same family behind the Tober-Saifer Shoe Company, which by the 1930s occupied the loft at 1204-06 just down the block. From 2002 the building housed Mossa Center, a high-end furniture store, with gallery space on the upper floors. In October 2026 the storefront stood empty with a for-sale sign. The 1986 district nomination singled it out, with Fashion Square, as one of the few Gothic buildings on the avenue.