SIC TRANSIT GLORIA

This modern building in downtown St. Louis is in an approximate tie for the tallest in town and has by far the greatest amount of floor space of any in Missouri. It was once the world headquarters of AT&T. It has been completely vacant since 2014.

The anti-trust break-up of the original AT&T years ago led to the creation of regional "Baby Bells" (as in Bell Telephone). St. Louis was headquarters of Southwestern Bell. The Baby Bells started to merge with and acquire one another, with Southwestern Bell in the lead. It then bought the rights to the AT&T name and eventually moved the headquarters to San Antonio.

The building sold in 2006 for $205 million with a leaseback to the phone company. I have read that it is hard to redevelop because it was built for a single tenant. It resold last spring for $4.1 million to an ambitious but much smaller developer. There is a proposed plan to turn it into a "vertical city" with apartments, office space and a hotel. I haven't heard anything further.

As I say here from time to time, we used to be somebody.               

THE GEOMETRY OF HEAVEN AND EARTH

The other edge of the same building in yesterday's post, again taken from Three Sixty. The moon rose as the sun set.       

NOT NEEDED

Central St. Louis isn't exactly a ghost town these days but it is awfully quiet. The banks, law firms and government offices are mostly on work-from-home. About a quarter of my office building is occupied by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, whose headquarters is next door. Not a soul in there. I rarely see another person on the elevators, which is fine with me.

This is the garage in our building's basement. It's so empty you could turn it into a massive laser tag field. I rather like the solitude, just me and my Honda.