Location: St. Louis, Missouri
Architect: Alden B. Dow
When the St. Louis branch office of the Dow Chemical Company needed to move to larger quarters, it leased the entire 18th floor of the Continental Building, the newest high-rise in the city’s central business district. Alden B. Dow was given free rein to design the interior space and completed the working drawings in October 1944. The new office opened in May 1945.
Visitors leaving the elevator on the 18th floor entered a reception area that seemed luxuriously spacious and unconfined by solid walls, a playful effect that was achieved by covering an entire wall with a mirror. The other immediate and striking feature was the unbusiness-like use of color everywhere. Walls were painted bright red and light green, the dropped ceiling a bright yellow, and the upper ceiling and carpet a deep blue.
Behind the reception area was the secretarial pool, an open space with 16 desks in the middle of the room. Large, recessed windows along one wall let in natural light, and glass-walled offices for the chemicals, magnesium and plastics salesmen lined the other walls. Variations of the same color scheme were used in this area as well. Conference rooms and offices featured round linoleum-topped tables with the edges laced in plastic. Managers’ offices, where privacy would be needed, had solid walls faced with mirrors on the outside.
Mr. Dow wrote about the beneficial effects of color in the work environment in an article that was published in Dow Diamond magazine in 1945 entitled, “Color – The New Element in Industry”:
“The Dow Chemical Company is one of the first to scientifically utilize bright hues, values and shades to ease the tasks of employees in the factory and the office…Inside the buildings, instead of the somber black or monotonous grays that have been customary, there are clear, clean colors that Walt Disney might take pride in using in one of his most fanciful movies.”
The St. Louis sales office, however, was not his first project that promoted the positive effects of color in a particular setting. Closer to home, his design of the Midland Hospital, which opened in 1944, also received considerable attention for the therapeutic value of the color palettes he used for the waiting rooms, operating rooms, and patient rooms.
