National Building Arts Center

Promoting Our Past, Preserving Our Future

Urban Archaeology: Lost Buildings of St. Louis

NBAC is pleased on announce its first-ever curated exhibition of collections at the Pulitzer Arts Foundation in St. Louis. The exhibit opens September 8, 2023 and runs through February 4, 2024. NBAC Executive Director curated Urban Archaeology in collaboration with Stephanie Weissberg and Molly Moog of the Pulitzer.

Drawn from the rich collection of the National Building Arts Center (NBAC), Urban Archaeology brings together salvaged architectural elements from landmark buildings, residential homes, and neighborhood institutions built in St. Louis between 1840 and 1950. The artifacts on display represent important histories of material innovation, labor, and the everyday lives of the people who inhabit the city. The exhibition sheds light on the city’s history, revealing complicated legacies of power, wealth, and neglect that shape our experience of the built environment and daily life. By studying St. Louis’s architectural past, Urban Archeology encourages us to imagine new ways of building, keeping, knowing, and inhabiting places.

Located in Sauget, Illinois, the National Building Arts Center emerged in response to the rapid economic decline and widespread demolition the city experienced beginning in the 1950s. NBAC has worked over four decades to salvage and preserve significant parts of condemned buildings that would otherwise be completely lost, amassing the largest and most diversified collection of building artifacts in the United States. Urban Archaeology is the most extensive public presentation of NBAC’s collection to date.

Learn more here.

Little Liberty’s Big Trip

The National Building Arts Center, the nation’s most comprehensive museum of the built environment, has brought the Statue of Liberty to its campus in St. Louis — more specifically, a famous 1902 replica from New York City being gifted by the Brooklyn Museum. Her name is Little Liberty.

We began this journey before the pandemic, which slowed progress and increased costs. Yet we are confident that 2023 will see the installation complete.

Now that we’ve met our goal to move Little Liberty to her new home, we need your help with restoration. And we have a challenge: A donor is willing to write a $25,000 check for the project if we can match it dollar for dollar.

Join the campaign here.

2023 Tours

The National Building Arts Center holds ticketed tours on the 2nd Saturday of each month. Please see our Eventbrite listings for 2023 monthly tours.

Passing of Larry Giles

Founder and President Larry Giles died June 12, 2021 of complications from cancer treatment. Read more here.

Contact Us

National Building Arts Center
2300 Falling Springs Rd.
Sauget, IL 62206
staff@nationalbuildingarts.org

About the National Building Arts Center

The St. Louis-based National Building Arts Center (NBAC) promotes public awareness of the crucial roles of architecture, manufacturing, construction, and urban design in our built environment.

Hours

The National Building Arts Center is open to the public as follows:

Public tours on the second Saturday of each month;
Events as listed on our calendar;
Research appointments for our library and archive collections.

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Follow us on Instagram: @nationalbuildingartscenter

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