An emergency order to demolish the 1927 Cass Avenue Bank building has been scrapped, marking a win for North St. Louis residents and preservationists who spent weeks pushing City Hall to reconsider. The Classical Revival structure at 1450 N. 13th Street, once a thriving bank and later a Greyhound bus terminal, will not come down after all, though what happens to it next is still an open question.
The reversal came after neighborhood advocates called the office of Alderman Rasheen Aldridge urging him to cancel the demolition, according to FOX 2. Aldridge said in late June that he was listening to concerns about the order, and the station reports that both his office and the mayor's office ultimately heard out residents' objections. Zen Harbison, one of the advocates who opposed the demolition, said the building should instead be invested in for future use.
Stuart Keating, executive director of the Landmarks Association of St. Louis, also opposed the emergency order and confirmed that active demolition work on the site had been stopped. He called the building a treasure belonging to all of St. Louis, per the station's report. Keating stepped into the Landmarks Association's top role in January, bringing a background in public interest law and historic preservation entrepreneurship as a co-founder of Earthbound Beer.
A Landmark With Deep Roots on Cass Avenue
The building's history stretches back to 1906, when the institution began as Cass Avenue Bank operating out of a rented storefront. It moved into the current structure in May 1927 and stayed until 1974, eventually evolving into Cass Information Systems, a publicly traded company that now disburses more than $94 billion annually, according to Cass Commercial Bank's own historical account. In its early years, the bank was known as an innovator in commercial freight payment automation and computerized payroll processing.
The National Park Service listed the building on the National Register of Historic Places on February 14, 2011, citing its Classical Revival design — smooth limestone cladding and eight squared Tuscan columns — from architects at the Bank Building and Equipment Company. After the bank moved out, the building became a Greyhound bus terminal before sitting vacant for years, suffering interior stripping, decay, and multiple fires, according to a history compiled by Unseen St. Louis. The Cass Avenue corridor where it sits now serves roughly 20,000 residents, per the station's report, and the building itself sits near downtown along the area's main commercial corridor.
Ownership Tangle Clouds the Building's Future
The building is owned by developer Paul McKee, whose company Northside Regeneration has assembled hundreds of vacant acres across North St. Louis over the past two decades — a footprint that has fueled community frustration over neglected property and stalled redevelopment, as detailed by NextSTL. McKee did not respond to two calls and two emails from FOX 2 seeking comment on the building's status.
The mayor's office said it is looking for a viable redevelopment plan for the building, and the Landmarks Association has said it hopes to help shape that plan. Getting there won't be simple. In January, Mayor Cara Spencer and the St. Louis Development Corporation announced eminent domain proceedings targeting 89 blighted McKee-owned properties in the neighborhood, but Bank of Washington — Northside Regeneration's primary lender — filed court papers in July urging a judge to reject the city's eminent domain push, arguing the redevelopment plan lacked legally required detail, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. At the center of that dispute is a large gap between the city's appraisals and the bank's higher debt valuation of the parcels.
Why the Corridor Suddenly Matters
Interest in Cass Avenue real estate has intensified since the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency opened its $1.75 billion Next NGA West campus at Cass and Jefferson avenues in late 2025, bringing roughly 3,000 federal workers to the immediate area — a shift Hoodline reported on as the campus came online. That federal investment has helped push city leaders to prioritize unlocking McKee's stalled land nearby. In March, a Board of Aldermen committee advanced a 25-year property tax abatement, sponsored by Aldridge, for a proposed $400 million mixed-use campus near Cass Avenue and 10th Street — also on Northside Regeneration land, in a plan Hoodline covered in its piece on the Old North tax break. That project, too, depends on developer Jeanetta Hawkins first acquiring land from McKee.
Emergency demolition orders in St. Louis are designed to move fast, bypassing the standard multi-week review process when a structure is deemed an immediate public safety threat, though the city's Cultural Resources Office is supposed to weigh in on historic district properties. Preservation advocates say that speed is exactly why they had to act quickly once the Cass Bank order was issued — city contractors can execute demolition contracts rapidly once cleared. FOX 2 says it plans to follow up on possible next steps for the building.
For now, the wrecking ball has been called off. But with the building's title still tied up in McKee's broader portfolio and the legal fight over his land unresolved, the century-old structure's long-term survival will hinge on untangling that ownership, according to reporting from the St. Louis American, and finding a redevelopment plan that can actually pay for the costly work of bringing it back.
