History
Built in 1892 at Broadway and Hitt Street, the Herald Building was designed by M. F. Bell, a prominent architect who also designed many of the buildings on the University of Missouri’s Francis Quadrangle. It reflects the wide popularity of Victorian architecture in Columbia at the time.
It is a freestanding brick building with rock-faced limestone accents and a low hipped roof. A polygonal bay at one corner was originally topped with a steep clock tower, a front cross gable is filled with an elaborate sunburst relief, and a small bracketed metal cornice accents the roofline. It is the only surviving two-story commercial building of its time in downtown Columbia that is not a two-part commercial block.
Largely intact today, the Herald Building is significant for its high level of architectural styling and for its association with the Herald, later the Herald Tribune, one of the town’s most prominent early newspapers. Read more about the building’s 120-year history in The Maneater.
The Home of the Herald
An engraving of the new building shows it as it first looked: a clock tower dated 1892 rising over the corner bay, a winged sunburst in the front gable, a flag on the roof and HERALD over the front door, with a carriage and pedestrians passing by.
Home of the E. W. Stephens Publishing Company
An early printed view of the building at 1020 E. Broadway, captioned as the home of the E. W. Stephens Publishing Company, with its corner clock tower and ornate cornice.
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