Buildings of Missouri

A nineteenth-century traveler once described Missouri as “neither east nor west nor north nor south.” It is a place of topographical transitions, delineated on the east by the Mississippi River and bisected by the Missouri River, encompassing a landscape of plains, bottomland, forests, and mountains, and home to iconic figures of American history—Laura Ingalls Wilder, Mark Twain, Scott Joplin, Jesse James, and Harry Truman, among them—as well as explorers, settlers, enslaved persons, immigrants, migrant workers, and, to this day, people starting new lives. Missouri has an equally rich mix of architectural styles and influences. The “Show Me State” volume in the award-winning Buildings of the United States series includes substantive guides to the major urban centers of St. Louis and Kansas City, surveys everything from Native American villages and petroglyphs to farms and small-town streetscapes, and highlights such landmarks of modern design as Adler and Sullivan’s Wainwright Building, Eero Saarinen’s iconic Gateway Arch, and Moshe Safdie’s Kauffman Center.