Continental Life Building

The Continental Life Building is an Art-deco skyscraper designed in 1928 by William B. Ittner, and built between 1929 and 1930 in St Louis, MO.

Continental Life Building is not the only name you might know this building by though. It is common for companies to want to attach their names to iconic buildings when they move in, or for the general public to come up with nicknames, and this one is no exception. The building has changed names several times over the years, and is also known as:

• Continental Building.
• Continental Life Apartments from 2022 until this day.

Its precise street address is 3615 Olive Street, St Louis, MO. You can also find it on the map here.

The building underwent a major restoration between 2001 and 2002. The architect commissioned to undertake this restoration was HBD Contrating.

William B. Ittner was the architecture firm in charge of the architectural design.

That being said, architecture is a complex discipline involving many professionals from different fields, without whom this building would have not been possible. We will surely be leaving out a lot of names here, but at the very least we know that there was one other part involved, that was Otis as the company in charge of the elevators system.

The Continental Life Building can be categorized as an Art-deco building.

The Continental Life Building was completed in 1930, right when the Art Deco movement was at its peak, so it kind of went with the trend at that time.

The Continental Life Building uses a frame structure made of steel columns and concrete slabs.

A frame structure uses a combination of beams and columns to sustain the building's weight. The walls in this case are non-load bearing, which allows for more flexibility when distributing the interior spaces.

The facade is a non-load bearing masonry facade. This type of facade became common during the period when buildings, especially taller ones, transitioned from load-bearing wall systems to frame structures.

Frame structures allowed facades to be independent from the building's frame, enabling the use of lighter materials and larger openings. However, it took some time for architects to incorporate these new posibilities into their designs, and so for a while they simply replicated the look and feel fo buildings people where used to seeing.

From an aesthetic point of view, the facade features a dark gray granite cladding at street level and up to the second floor. The main entrance features stylized columns and an Art Deco pattern above, along with the antique clock that was recovered after restoration.

Another characteristic feature of the building are the sculpted terracotta figures on the parapet of the 16th floor.

Another material found at the Continental Life Building is green granite, found in the lobby walls and stairs.