Olympia Apartments - 3863 West Pine

For my first post, I present the Olympia Apartments which stood at the corner of West Pine and Vandeventer. An ideal urban building, it had retail along Vandeventer, entry & lobby off West Pine, and six floors of apartments above.

According to St. Louis Landmarks & Historic Districts, the Olympia was designed in 1926 by David R. Harrison with terra cotta ornament from the Winkle Terra Cotta Company of St. Louis. It had been listed on the National Register in 1986, which meant it would have been eligible to receive Federal and State Historic Rehabilitation Tax Credits. However in July 1993, the Olympia was demolished as part of SLU’s decade long quest to create a unified campus. Ironically, a several years later, SLU would build several new low rise apartment buildings just to the southeast of the site.

The Olympia could have been a great anchor for the west end of SLU’s campus, but instead it is anchored by surface parking lots. Kitty corner to the Olympia also stood the highly ornamented Vesper Buick Building, which SLU demolished in 1995 for another surface parking lot.