Railway Exchange Sub-Basement

[Whitepanther]

Because an intro is needed I somehow managed to obtain preliminary permission to access the building through a liaison that has a special appointment by the mayor’s office. That’s a position that’s been facilitated by many former mayors and isn’t new. This individual serves as a liaison between the owner, the city, and prospective developers. According to the supervisor who was doing security for the building through this liaison over the summer the building was being ravaged by two groups of scrap copper thieves who he says were both from Illinois. Just prior to my going in the building the team doing security pulled out for not getting paid. His suggestion to me right before going in was to go do whatever the hell I wanted in there because that’s what everyone else was doing already. Also worth mentioning that he said he did have to pull his pistol once when some of the scrappers hid behind a wall before lunging at him. From everything he told me and from what I saw with my own eyes I’d say these scrap thieves were a lot less like tweakers and might’ve even been parolees so it’s not a bunch you’d wanna cross paths with.

I used to work in this building back in the day when May Company still occupied it. That’s the parent company to what used to be Famous Barr, Lord & Taylor, David’s Bridal, and about seven other companies prior to the acquisition by Macy’s. This building was the first in the world to take up the footprint of an entire modern city block (citation St. Louis 365 book). It’s a very misleading building from street view and intentionally so. The 20 story building is really only perimeter construction only from the 9th floor up. The Famous Barr operation once took up 8 floors of retail space. Don’t ask me how but I would work there for monthly maintenance in the data center on the same day they flew models for the Sunday ads that would appear in the newspaper who arrived with luggage in hand straight from Lambert by executive town cars. Ringers!

I was only there between the years of 03 to 08 but it seemed like it was longer. May Company easily had what would have once been considered the top 10 largest data centers in town and the electrical wiring feeders to the 8th floor for that alone is why I believe the place attracted so many rogue scrap copper thieves. The data center had seen a big transition to servers before I was there and only a fraction of the data center space was really needed by that time but when it was first built it housed very large punch card machines and then later large mainframes before servers became a thing. The data center infrastructure is one that involves redundant power supply systems to everything so the electrical feeders were enough in terms of quantity to facilitate a space twice its size. To simplify the moving of power whips and low voltage cables and fiber there rooms typically utilize a raised floor system which consists of pedestals and stringers the 24” x 24” floor tiles rest on. The raised floor also has the dual purpose of serving as the supply air duct for all the large air conditioners that cool the equipment in the room. Some years before I worked there May Company had a woman who stepped onto a wobbling floor tile because the floor hadn’t had a tune up. She went through the 24” deep floor and suffered a compound fracture to her leg because of this.

In more recent years I hunted down an FB group who consisted primarily of former employees of the Famous Barr in the building. I began asking about the lower section of the building. The response was overwhelming with people talking about very ominous vibes they got from a cafeteria for employees that was near the tunnel between this building and the mall next door. When the mall was built a legal easement was established between the two entities that facilitated the use of the loading docks at the mall for the moving of merchandise into Famous Barr. When the Railway Exchange building went vacant because of May Company transferring its operations to Ohio, the doors connecting the two buildings were welded shut so that any future tenants of that building couldn’t claim access to the former loading docks that Famous utilized. In addition to the welding of doors the freight elevator was also decommissioned to further separate the two buildings from any former agreement. St. Louis Centre was never actually torn down. The building exterior got a facelift. The interior went through pretty heavy modifications to convert the former mall space to additional parking for the garage. Below that loading dock is where the chillers for May Company sat.

Anyway the adventure into Railway after all these years was bittersweet to say the least. But what’s my goal of this visit? Carl Conrad’s original beer cave that was the first to house Budweiser is partially under this building. Unfortunately it sat too long and because of two separate water main breaks a diesel powered pump with a 4” discharge had to be operated for a whole month to rid the building of the +2M gallons of water it took on in the lower recesses. I don’t do any narrating in the video but there’s a lower section beneath the sub-basement that I climbed down into at one point and it’s full of water still. That’s a chiller room that ran from the second sub-basement of the building to the former St. Louis Centre mall across the street. I believe that’s the most likely place for an entrance to the old Bremer Rathskellar to be. Unfortunately the water is too murky even before stirring up sediment to identify submerged hazards like open floor hatches and equipment that could impale someone. It wasn’t safe to go through it alone and honestly it would be sketchy even if not alone.

My journey took me from the first floor attic to the sub-basement as you can see in the attached video. I went alone and unarmed. It was the scariest $#!+ I’ve ever done. But here’s the effort to reclaim the infamous Bremer Rathskellar. It was a high risk low reward venture for what it’s worth. Due to suspended steeets attached to that building I could hear what was clearly very heavy equipment being moved around somewhere above me. The acoustic effects made it sound like it was right above me. Water can be heard flowing and dripping. And the 4,160 volt power feeds were still humming in the tunnel that connected this building to the mall next door. In October 2023 I finally saw electrical contractors on site pulling the transformers below street level.

With all that out of the way here’s my heavy breathing half scared to death trip to the sub basement of Railway Exchange.

https://youtu.be/8DbabKF9oDs?si=KumWfdMf5RXL_xns

[Whitepanther]

Forgot to mention something that occurred in recent history. In March 2023 the fire department was doing a sweep of the building to flush out any unauthorized inhabitants. For whatever reason their dog lunged at something on one of the upper floors and somehow ended up sliding out of a window. The dog fell from an undisclosed height onto that lower roof I mentioned and the fall was unfortunately fatal. Partially because of that incident there’s hard feelings by some first responders as it pertains to this building and anyone hypothetically found in it.

[Chubz]

amazing vid WP thanks for sharing this

[mindwaave]

Dayum, ballsy!!

[Whitepanther]

amazing vid WP thanks for sharing this

I’m just a dork with a camera phone but thx. Good info on the Jamestown thing btw. Thanks again and keep up the great work.

[Whitepanther]

Dayum, ballsy!!

I’ll take it. But it was a dumb venture.