I happened upon a commercial building located in downtown St Louis called "The Railway Exchange Building".
Curious because of the name, I tried to do a little research into the origination background of the building, to learn that there were identically named buildings in Chicago, Milwaukee, Muskogee, and Portland.
Unfortunately while there is a wealth of information available on efforts to redevelop and repurpose these buildings, very little information seems to be available tying these buildings to rail related trade, their original developers, or what functions the buildings served.
Anybody have any specifics? It's easy to imagine these buildings being the "Trailer-Trains" of railroad corporate offices, but having nothing more than intuition to go upon, is frustrating. Anyone have specific knowledge they would care to share?
Were these buildings built by the railroads for their own use, or did independent developers build these buildings in expectation that having all the railroads under one roof would be a good selling point to lease space?
Was there any kind of open brokerage where "connections" were made through competitive bidding processes, or were more relationships of the "good ol boy" type where you just naturally went to one particular railroad to link into specific geographical areas?
Can't answer any of your questions, except to wonder if they were somehow clearing houses for the Railway Express Agency. much like the hubs used by today's package services.
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tree68 wonder if they were somehow clearing houses for the Railway Express Agency. much like the hubs used by today's package services.
wonder if they were somehow clearing houses for the Railway Express Agency. much like the hubs used by today's package services.
It wouldn't surprise me if that was a part of it, but the building in St Louis is over a million square feet of office space (21 stories with a footprint covering an entire city block), which is a huge building especially for 1914 when it was built. Way bigger than REA would need just for itself.
Would this building be, for instance, where all the major railroads had their St Louis field office, allowing intra-line connections to be negotiated face to face.....or was this where the mighty Wabash stabled an army of customer service agents who went out in the field daily trying to beat Mopac to the punch?
The Chicago Railway Exchange Building was the corporate headquarters foe The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway for many years. It was located at Jackson and Michigan with the Chicago Museum of Art across the street. The Michigan Ave. offices had a view of Grant Park and Lake Michigan. There were several offices leased to railroad supply companies; and the Fred Harvey company occupied 17th floor offices facing Michigan Ave.
Convicted OneIt wouldn't surprise me if that was a part of it, but the building in St Louis is over a million square feet of office space (21 stories with a footprint covering an entire city block),
Given the size of the building as you note, something like you suggest makes more sense.
tree68Can't answer any of your questions, except to wonder if they were somehow clearing houses for the Railway Express Agency. much like the hubs used by today's package services.
My GUESS is that the buildings have nothing to do with Railway Express.
I would think they were more likely oriented to the interline settlements of both revenues and interline maintenance expenses and housing the cadre of clerical staff to support the process for each carrier involved in the particular geographical areas. Just a WAG!
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
BaltACDMy GUESS is that the buildings have nothing to do with Railway Express.
I see now that there were also at one time buildings named the "Railway Exchange Building" located in Kansas City, and Denver.
But still find nothing that indicates a common ownership, or even that clarifies if the buildings were built by the railroads themselves, or by private developers hoping to capitalize on railroad needs.
I do see that some of them had non-railroad tenants (partial occupancy) shortly after being built, but still no authoritative source. Amazing how time can just swallow some things up.
Information got "exchanged" a lot differently way back when. (No internet, e-mail, computers) Telephones were limited.
Denver Original Railway Express building came down in 1937 (Surviving 1909, 1937 additions now the art-deco Hotel Monaco )
Add St. Louis and Cincinnati as cities with Railway Exchange buildings.
Pretty sure this is what it is derived from the internet description of the Chicago Railway exchange (Santa Fe building):
The building appears to be built via a stockbroker by selling stock or bonds which would finance construction. The stock brokerage firm would offer the building to a specific Railway client(s) for office space. It is the classic creation of annuity funding in which a fixed asset is created and then leased and the proceeds of the long-term lease fund the annuity payments to the annuity holders that bought the bonds or stocks. My guess is the lease with Santa Fe was for well over 50 years or something of that nature in order to guarantee "payback" to the clients. With penalties for early termination of the lease.
In the case of Chicago's the funding stock brokerage also had office space in the building along with Santa Fe. My guess also is the specific stock brokerage that initiated construction and funded the building was also responsible for the placement and sale of Santa Fe stock. I think the term "Exchange" has more to do with the building being funded by the Stock Exchange then the activity that took place in the building.
mudchickenInformation got "exchanged" a lot differently way back when. (No internet, e-mail, computers) Telephones were limited.
That reminds me of the International Trade Mart building in New Orleans. It probably functioned similarly to the Railway Exchange Buildings, where shippers and their potential customers could conduct business, with ships in one case or trains in the other. Largely because of modern communications, the ITM has been shut down for years, and they have been wrangling for years about redeveloping the building as a hotel and/or apartment building.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Trade_Mart
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Miningman Posted by Convicted One on Saturday, October 12, 2019 10:55 AM I happened upon a commercial building located in downtown St Louis called "The Railway Exchange Building". https://www.stlouisarchitecture.org/pdf/2013%20Fall%20A.pdf https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/imgsrv/image?id=mdp.39015080378436;seq=1;size=200;rotation=0
The tenant was the Famous-Barr department store (part of the May chain) from 1914-2013.
The one in Chicago had several architecture firms as tenants. It was supposed to be a railway exchange in function, given the large number of railroads, terminals and rail employees in Chicago.
MiningmanI happened upon a commercial building located in downtown St Louis called "The Railway Exchange Building".
I can't thank you enough, that was exactly what I was looking for, and more.
The part about them filling in the lightwell from floors 8-12 to create more office space solves the mystery of why I couldn't make the advertised sq ft figures "work".
Surprised, on a Kalmbach forum, that nobody has mentioned the ex-Herman Building, renamed the Milwaukee Railway Exchange Building in 1906.
Someone like greyhounds will either know, or easily know how to find, the history of 'railway exchanges' as analogous to, say, cotton or other trade exchanges. What I suspect is that they were organizations intended to serve a bit like homebuilder associations do now: a way for firms in or associated with the railroad business to work in commonalty of interest. And that they would have become technically illegal at some point, quite possibly after passage of the Hepburn Act, as we see relatively many 'railway exchange buildings' built in the years right around the turn of the century, but not even historical reference. At that point the building would become, as previously noted, a place facilitating face-to-face interaction between tenants.
If your hypothesis were probable, why would these structures have been built after/near the 1906 Hepburn Act and the Elkins Act of 1903? The regulation pendulum was well in motion by 1901.
Milwaukee 1906
St. Louis 1913(4)
Chicago 1903
As a further thought, ca1900 is when the railroads were still expanding, rapidly. That meant huge capital needs for financing new construction and line improvements. Leasing office space would have eliminated the capital need for offices. The earlier suggestions make sense to me.
Most large companies are simply tenants in their headquarters buildings today, even if the dominant name for the building might imply otherwise.
John
OvermodAnd that they would have become technically illegal at some point,
Just speculating, but I wonder if these properties could have functioned as a tax shelter for the railroad's major stockholders? Three or four seats on the board of directors could band together, build the buildings, and use their influence to dictate that the railroads lease space from them.
Instead of collecting maximum dividends from their RR holdings, some of that money is instead routed through the exchange building first, allowing among other things the acquisition of the building over time as it's financing is paid down? Nice little side gimmick being this is a way for the major stockholders to pick the pockets of their not-so-major peers.
cx500Most large companies are simply tenants in their headquarters buildings today, even if the dominant name for the building might imply otherwise. John
When Chessie System moved their operational HQ offices from the B&O Building (which was sold to the City of Baltimore for $1 to be redeveloped) to Charles Center, Charles Center still contained a floor and a half of Law Firm offices. When the law firms lease ran out, it wasn't renewed and when they departed their space was reconfigured for railroad use. Subsequent to that, starting in 1986 CSX started moving departments and their employees to Jacksonville. I don't know when CSX substansially left Charles Center, as I departed to Jacksonville in June 1990.
There used to be an ATSF city ticket office on the first floor of Chicago's Railway Exchange Building. The back wall of the office was painted as a mural of the Grand Canyon. Fred Harvey was also a tenant on an upper floor.
Railway Exchange Building Milwaukee
(for a while in Milwaukee the corporate headquarters of CNW)
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