File:Carter Carburetor Building and Knights of Pythias Hall, Grand Boulevard, Grand Center, St. Louis, MO - 53237003736.jpg

English: Built in 1925 and 1929, this Romanesque Revival building and Art Deco tower were constructed to house the headquarters of the Carter Carburetor Company and the Knights of Pythias Hall. The buildings demonstrate the changing and contrasting aesthetic tastes of the era, with the earlier building demonstrating the traditional architectural trends that dominated the early 20th Century, and the newer, taller building demonstrating a departure from tradition in favor of a more modern style, which stylized and stripped-down ornament in favor of more expression through geometric forms and less intricate or literal ornamentation. The earlier building, which stands along Grand Boulevard, features a limestone-clad facade with a parapet with decorative recessed panels, windows with decorative trim, with windows on the second floor flanking the central bay featuring corinthian engaged columns between them, a large double-height entrance with an arched transom and decorative bronze trim at the doors and transom, a white granite base, a penthouse containing mechanical equipment, originally intended to be the base of an elevator and stair core of an unbuilt tower, and a cornice with brackets. The later building features a brown brick exterior with limestone trim, buttress, gothic arched windows on the upper floors, a tiered massing with setbacks towards the top, a penthouse below a copper spire, a limestone base, recessed brick and limestone spandrels, a garage on the ground floor, accessed via Grandel Square, and simple, decorative reliefs above the top rows of windows at the face of the spandrels and parapets. The buildings are contributing structures in the Midtown Historic District, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1977, and today house the Grand Center Arts Academy.