One of the best-known historic warehouse complexes in St. Louis, and the one with the most anticipated glow-up, has burned down.
In the early hours of Friday, November 28th, a fire broke out in one of the Crunden-Martin warehouses in the vicinity of 2nd St. and Gratiot. Before long, several buildings were burning, prompting the St. Louis Fire Department to declare a five-alarm fire, with over 200 firefighters helping to control the blaze. According to St. Louis Fire Chief Dennis Jenkerson, four buildings were fully involved when firefighters arrived.
Firefighters have since contained the fire, though they expect flare-ups as embers continue to smolder. Jenkerson indicated that it is too soon to determine the cause of the fire.
Despite the devastating loss, there are a few pieces of good news. Firefighters safely evacuated several unhoused people from inside and around the warehouse, and no firefighter injuries have been reported. The adjacent 19th-century St. Mary of Victories Catholic Church also remains undamaged (as of this publication).
It’s worth noting that Building #5 of the complex, built in 1912, burned in 2011, and today’s fire gutted what was left of the interior. But perhaps because of the previous fire, this blaze wasn’t intense enough to jump to the church.
Crunden-Martin: A Look Back
Frank Crunden, a St. Louis native, entered the woodenware business in 1876. Charles Martin, who had previously worked with the Cupples Woodenware Company, founded his own firm, Martin Woodenware Company, in 1891. Later that same year, the two men merged their operations and created the Crunden-Martin Woodenware Company. The partnership quickly outgrew its first three riverfront buildings, which were later demolished to make way for the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial. Their growing success led to the development of a much larger industrial complex.
The Crunden-Martin complex occupied an entire block just south of downtown. The first building went up in 1904, designed by the prominent St. Louis firm Mauran, Russell, and Garden. It was a five-story red brick structure with a terracotta cornice and corbelled brickwork. Six more buildings followed between 1905 and 1920. Most continued the original brick design, which reflected the Classical Revival influence of the 1904 structure. The one major exception was a concrete warehouse designed in 1920 by Tom P. Barnett and Company. Barnett, the son of architect George I. Barnett, had recently established his own firm after working on major projects, including the St. Louis Cathedral and the Post-Dispatch Building. His Crunden-Martin warehouse became one of his earliest and most distinctive industrial works, combining crenellated details with a straightforward factory form.
By the early 20th century, Crunden, Martin, and their partner Conzelman controlled several related enterprises housed within the seven-building complex. These included the Crunden-Martin Woodenware Company, later known as the Crunden-Martin Manufacturing Company, as well as the Conzelman-Crunden Realty Company, the Bowman Stamping Company, and the Swayzee Glass Company. The range of goods produced on site was remarkably broad. Between 1891 and 1990, the company made woodenware, willow-ware, and metal goods. Their catalog included buckets, bowls, baskets, toys, baby carriages, furniture, refrigerators, brooms, rope, and even axle grease. During WWII, the company produced helmets, stoves, buckets, and five-gallon gasoline cans (jerry cans) for the U.S. military. Between 1891 and 1900, Crunden-Martin was second only to the Samuel Cupples Woodenware Company, and by 1924, it was the sole woodenware firm represented in the Merchants’ Exchange of St. Louis.
Crunden-Martin filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1990, shortly before its 100th anniversary. Its final products included paper bags, galvanized ware, paper school supplies, and Man-in-the-Moon kites. Efforts to reorganize failed, and the plant closed. Two years later, the entire complex sold at auction for only $90,000, a striking contrast to the industrial might the company once represented.
(Historical information sourced from the Crunden-Martin National Register of Historic Places Registration Form, 2004, and the St. Louis Preservation Research Office. Diagram of the complex is also from the National Register of Historic Places form.)
Gateway South: What Comes Next
Developers behind the $1.2 billion Gateway South project told the St. Louis Business Journal that the five-alarm fire that tore through the complex will force design changes, but will not derail the broader redevelopment effort.
Gateway South, first unveiled in 2022, envisions turning roughly 94 acres along the Mississippi River south of the Arch into a national center for building and construction industry innovation. At the core of the plan are the two massive Crunden-Martin buildings — nearly 500,000 square feet of historic industrial space that Good Developments Group has described as the project’s “beating heart.” The west building was slated to become a high-bay prototyping lab for new construction technologies, while the east building would be rebuilt as a mixed-use hub with retail, dining, and Class A office space geared toward architects, designers, developers, and building-tech startups.
It’s worth noting that Gateway South was not focused solely on the Crunden-Martin complex. Several project sites are located immediately south of the warehouses and would be unaffected by the fire. Note the diagram below, from Gateway South:
After hearing of the fire, President David J. Koster of the Good Developments Group told the SLBJ that the complex “was not only a cornerstone of our Gateway South vision but also a symbol of the city’s ability to reinvent and reuse its historic fabric, and while it is too early to know the full extent of the damage or the long-term implications for the project, our commitment to this area and to St. Louis has not changed.”
Photos by Jason Deem and Jackie Dana
