CannonDesign Transforms the Interiors of a Former Newspaper Building into Modern Tech Offices

Back in 1878, when the West was still wild and the U.S. had only 38 states, Joseph Pulitzer, a self-made Hungarian immigrant, acquired two struggling Missouri newspapers and merged them into the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, which has been publishing ever since. In 1959, the paper moved its newsroom and printing plant into a 1930 art deco-style building by prominent local architects Mauran, Russell and Crowell for another, now-defunct news daily. The Post-Dispatch sold the building in 2018 and now occupies smaller facilities nearby.

Today, after a $70 million overall makeover, the building houses 850 employees of Square and Cash App, two divisions of Block, Inc., the high-tech financial services and digital payments company. The staff had previously been working in three different locations, and the corporation’s primary objective was to centralize this workforce in one user-friendly space.

Now based in San Francisco, Block was founded in St. Louis in 2009 by two natives of the Gateway City: Jack Dorsey (also a co-founder of Twitter) and Jim McKelvey, a tech-head, entrepreneur, and glass artist. To create its new Missouri digs, the company hired CannonDesign, one of the nation’s largest architectural firms.

Block was clear about its remit for the 225,000-square-foot building, which comprises six stories and two basement levels: “The client was looking to create a home for its employees,” reports project director Ken Crabiel, vice president and commercial and civic market leader at Cannon’s St. Louis office. “A place where they could be connected with one another in a variety of ways.” Like a home, the plan called for a series of connected spaces, both large and small, public and private, to accommodate multiple activities.

The large spaces include three multilevel atria that connect to the more intimate areas by a series of interior staircases. Employees can choose to work at a traditional desk or on a sofa or lounge chair, and meetings can range from intimate tête-à-têtes to company-wide confabs in the vast all-hands area. The building can accommodate up to 1,200 workers, so Block has room to grow in place. (Currently, most employees are free to work from home or in the office, as they choose.)

In a project-defining move, the original newspaper printing press has been left in place—a steampunkish behemoth that stretches roughly 80 feet along the ground floor. Project designer and Cannon associate Olivia Gebben is especially enamored of the small basement-level lounge spaces tucked among the massive steel columns and beams that support the machinery above. “In these lounges, you can look up and literally touch the buttons and wheels that made the presses tick,” she enthuses.

“It’s hard to overestimate the role that press has in the collective memory of St. Louis,” Crabiel observes, noting that the machinery was clearly visible behind large street-level windows. “People used to come to watch the presses cranking out the paper. Nowadays the use of the building may be different, but you can still see activity in and around the press through those same windows, especially at night.”

The renovation also preserved a spiral staircase, much of Pulitzer’s office, and areas of decorative terrazzo flooring. Otherwise, floors throughout are the original concrete, with all their evolved patina showing. “We just refinished them with a low-grit polish,” Gebben notes. Adaptive reuse is nothing new to Cannon, which operates its St. Louis practice out of a similarly gutted and reinvented 1928 power station. “We’re fortunate to have a lot of that kind of building stock in our city,” Crabiel acknowledges. “And much of it is getting new life.”

The interior program was intentionally kept timeless, both natural and neutral. “We featured exposed concrete and natural oak against a lot of black and white,” Gebben says. “The bright blue printing press is a huge presence, so we didn’t add much color.” Most of the color, in fact, comes from numerous art installations.

“Art is in the DNA of our company,” says Jay Scheinman, Block’s global municipal affairs lead. “Jack Dorsey and Jim McKelvey came up with the idea of Square when Jim couldn’t complete the sale of one of his glass pieces because he didn’t have the ability to take a credit card.” In keeping with this strong connection to art, a contest was run for local artists to come up with pieces reflecting the company’s mission of economic empowerment. The 10 winning entries are now incorporated into the fabric of the building. Third Degree Glass Factory, founded by McKelvey in a reclaimed 1920’s service station, devised a striking ceiling installation—a constellation of suspended vitreous globes—for the third-to-fourth-floor atrium. “The blue color is as close a match to the press as possible,” Crabiel explains. “And the individual handblown ‘bubbles’ are meant to represent ink droplets.”

“So often in design, you look at the physical form and can see the connections between the original building and the renovation,” Crabiel continues. “But sometimes there’s an underlying philosophical connection, too.” Pulitzer believed that providing information enabled readers to make responsible choices. “Block is centered on the same principle,” the architect says, “and we wanted that notion to have a presence in the new iteration of the Post-Dispatch building.”

Cannon­Design: Ken Crabiel; Olivia Gebben, michael bonomo; nicole andreu; kevin zwick; elise novak; enge sun; melissa pirtle; stephen gantner; carmen ruiz cruz; kelsey mack; heather rosen; michelle rotherham; rita radley; brendan smith; jocelyn wildman; alex oliver; alyssa packard; barrett newell

trivers architecture: architect of record

mcclure engineering: MEP

KPFF Consulting Engineers: Structural Engineer

tarlton corp.: general contractor

Andreu World: café tables (all hands)

davis: chairs

ofs: high tables

coalesce: stools

flos: lighting system

plyboo: paneling (all hands, atrium 2)

knollstudio: chairs (game room)

gestalt: side tables (game room, lounge area 1)

kasthall: rugs (lounge areas)

Hay: sofa (lounge area 1), side chairs (terrace)

ecosense: pendant fixture (conference room)

tretford: carpet

herman miller: side chairs (con­ference room), task chairs (office area)

stylex: sofa (lounge area 2)

bernhardt: coffee table (lounge area 2), side tables (atrium 1), ottomans (atrium 2)

modloft: lounge chairs (atrium 1)

mafi: stairs, flooring (atria)

poe: storefront systems

Janus et Cie: tables (terrace)

Paola Lenti: lounge chairs

kettal: side tables, lounger

landscape forms: benches

pair: workstations (office area)

fine mod imports: lounge chairs

de padova: coffee tables

anthropologie: rug

focal point: pendant fixtures

Interface: carpet tile

woodtech: café tables (atrium 2)

Fredericia: side chairs

resident: sofa

vitra: lounge chairs

Ethnicraft: coffee table

vibia: floor lamp

growing green: planters

ppg industries: paint

HOK Creates a Streamlined Office for a Freight Rail Operator in Atlanta

Transportation company Norfolk Southern Corporation traces its history back to 1827. But today it’s firmly rooted in the 21st century. Its subsidiary, Norfolk Southern Railway Company, which oversees 19,000 miles of train tracks across 22 states, relies on technology to ensure safety, move goods efficiently, and reduce fuel emissions. But to be innovative and nimble—and attract top coders and engineers—NS needed to consolidate into a state-of-the-art headquarters. For decades, the corporation was based in Norfolk, Virginia, but its operations and technology teams were in Atlanta. In 2018, NS decided to bring everyone together, and HOK won the bid for the interiors of a new 750,000-square-foot complex in Midtown Atlanta’s Tech Square.

“The client didn’t want this to be treated like a train museum,” HOK firm-wide director of interiors Tom Polucci begins. “The existing buildings had beautiful models of locomotives, but NS said, ‘No, we’re more sophisticated than that.’” Betsy Nurse, HOK Atlanta’s director of interiors, adds: “Norfolk Southern sees itself as a tech company, not a railroad company.” The client envisioned a timeless concept where track workers and administrators alike would feel at home, with ample flex spaces to help the 3,000 on-site employees meet and collaborate. Robust amenities—fitness center, food hall, game room, childcare center—would help the company compete for talent against the likes of Google.

With architecture by Pickard Chilton, the ground-up headquarters is composed of two office towers (10 and 17 stories tall) joined by a five-story podium, which houses the lobby, amenities, and parking. HOK was at the table from the beginning and helped shape some of the architectural solutions, especially in the podium. The parking deck constrained the volume that would become the lobby, which could have been one to three stories high. “We studied different options and how the floors wove together,” Polucci says. The team landed on a 32-foot-high lobby that’s open to loungelike collaboration zones on the second floor and creates energy and buzz. This gave HOK the opportunity to create a monumental circular stair, the defining element of the interior.

The firm conceived of the stair as an iconic sculpture that would make the headquarters unique. Its ribbon of Corian-clad steel twists from the ground floor to the fourth, but the white-oak treads only begin on level two. In the lobby—detached from the stairs for security reasons—the Corian curls to wrap the reception desk. “Our goal was a pure form,” Polucci says. “The ribbon is consistent all the way up; it doesn’t flatten out at each floor.”

The stair grew out of the idea of movement, the guiding theme of the project. “Norfolk Southern was looking to celebrate the idea of motion in subtle, special ways,” Polucci notes. Outside the building’s entrance, a site-specific sculpture evokes tunnels and curved tracks in weathering steel. Nurse points out that the artwork is right outside the lobby, where you can see its relationship to the stair: “One is super refined, the other is raw.”

Artwork populates the interior, as well. In the ground-floor café, which is open to the public, there’s a 19-foot-high mural by HOK’s Experience Design team of a train on a track under a golden moon. Nearby, a painting by local artist María Korol hangs at the end of the main elevator lobby.

On the fourth floor, the stair terminates in front of the network operations center, which is like an air-traffic control room for trains. “From a visitor experience, it tells a story, because you land at the heart of the facility,” Nurse says. The room vividly channels the concept of motion with angular pendant fixtures and 2,000 feet of recessed LED strips that streak across the ceiling and down the walls. The center, which operates 24/7, also glows with blue lighting chosen to be soft on the eyes of dispatchers staring at screens all day.

Employees come together in the fifth-floor canteen that doubles as an all-hands meeting space. Designed like a food hall with six different vendors, it sits between two outdoor terraces; one has a retractable glass wall so the spaces can flow together. Totaling 55,000 square feet, the outdoor areas include another terrace by the gym on the floor below, where employees can do laps on circular walking paths. “Movement is also important to Norfolk Southern from a health and wellness perspective,” Nurse states. Glass-walled stairs in both towers further encourage physical activity.

While the array of amenities might seem like a post-pandemic bid to lure workers back to the office, the program had already been in place. The headquarters was mid-construction in March 2020, and Norfolk Southern stuck to the plan—even keeping a permanent desk for each employee. “That was a key tenant from the beginning,” Annie Adams, Norfolk Southern’s chief transformation officer, says. “It was important that everyone have a space to call their own.” The company, which had a phased move-in that began last fall and was completed in April, had always planned on accommodating hybrid work; meeting rooms are wired to connect remote participants seamlessly. Adams estimates that the headquarters is typically at 80 percent capacity. For her, the project’s success goes well beyond its anticipation of flexible work schedules. “The design reflects who we are and where we’re going,” she says. The future of freight rail, it seems, is right on track.

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HOK: danielle schmitt; kay sargent; diana stanisic; vivien chen; richard saunders; weronika cichosz; francesca meola; crystal latham; valerie roosma; irina sai; erin ezell; emily payne; bethany foss; claire pellettiere; matt mcinerney

HKS: architect of record

OJB: landscape consultant

HOK Experience Design: custom graphics

one lux studio: lighting con­sultant

uzun + case: structural engineer

integral consulting: mep

onsite woodwork corporation: custom fabrication workshop

hitt: general contractor

masland carpets: rug (lobby)

hbf: sofa (lobby), chairs (café)

luum: sofa upholstery (lobby), chair fabric (lounge)

shaw contract: lvt (break room); rugs (break room, lounge), carpet tile (daycare)

Courtesy of Davis Furniture: tables (break room)

jamie stern design: custom banquettes

pollack: banquette upholstery

mortensen woodwork: custom screens (lounge)

curry sawmill co.: custom table

Andreu World: chairs (lounge, café)

Holly Hunt: chair (reception)

art & associates: custom light fixtures (gym entry), custom wallcovering (gym)

wolf-gordon: wallcovering (gym entry)

Bentley Mills: carpet tile (conference center)

russ bassett: workstation (operations center)

lambert & fils: pendant fixtures (café)

nydree floor­ing: floor tile (canteen)

martin brattrud: tables

sandler seating: stools

ton: chairs

nanawall: folding glass wall

atomic 50: ceiling panels (game room)

flor: carpet tile

CB2: ceiling fixtures

hightower: red chairs

ofs: ping pong table

big ass fans: fans (gym)

pliteq: floor tile

flos: track fixtures (daycare)

ef contract: lvt

Dupont: corian

basaltite: stone flooring

kährs: wood flooring

axis lighting; genled brands; hubbell; led linear; 3g lighting; usai lighting: lighting

decoustics; ritz acoustics; usg: acoustical ceilings

benjamin moore & co.: paint