If you have a chance to tour a radio station today, the odds are pretty good the studio will be part of what might be called a radio “assembly line,” thanks to the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Since huge corporate owners now cluster multiple radio stations in single locations, it’s common to see hallways lined on either side by different radio stations, as many as seven stations in a building. Throughout the history of radio, though, there have been some very interesting single studio locations in the St. Louis area.
Hotels have been the most popular location for local radio studios. KFVE was in the Missouri Hotel at 11th and Locust in the ‘20s and then relocated to the 3rd floor of the Chase Hotel in 1927. KMOX started out as one of the first tenants of the new Mayfair Hotel in 1925. KSTL began broadcasting from the mezzanine level of the American Hotel at 7th and Market in 1948. KWIX-FM occupied the penthouse on the roof of the Ambassador Hotel, 707 North 6th in the ‘60s. KWK was on the 9th floor of the Chase Hotel in 1930. WTMV, which became WBBR and WAMV had studios in the landmark Broadview Hotel in East St. Louis. WIL moved through several hotels: the Arcade level of the Missouri Hotel; the 16th floor of the Melbourne at Lindell and Grand; the 9th floor of the Chase Hotel; and the Coronado, about three blocks west on Lindell. Even WSBF, owned by a downtown department store, spent a short period of time at the Warwick Hotel at 1428 Locust.
Private homes have also housed radio studios here. The market’s renowned public station, KDNA, broadcast from an old home at 4285 Olive in what was then Gaslight Square. KSHE began in the basement of its owner’s home in Crestwood at 1035 Westglen Drive. WEW once broadcast from the basement of a West County home at 1323 Autumn Wood Drive after fire destroyed their studios. The station is now in a house at 2740 Hampton. WRTH was in a prefabricated rural home near Wood River.
Some stations’ homes were in logical, if unorthodox sites. A gymnasium at 5539 Page was the site of KFQA, the Principia station. The first studios of KFUO were on the roof of a building of what was then Concordia Seminary on South Jefferson at Winnebago. WCK and later WSBF were located in Stix, Baer & Fuller department store, which owned the stations. WGNU began in trailers at the transmitter site near Granite City before moving to the 13th floor of a Central West End high rise. WMAY was in the Kingshighway Presbyterian Church near Cabanne because the church owned the station. WMRY was on the grounds of Our Lady of the Snows shrine. That station was owned by the religious oblates. When KFVE went on the air it was located in the Egyptian Building at 6830 Delmar in University City, which had been part of the complex built by magazine entrepreneur E. G. Lewis. The Globe-Democrat wrote in June of 1949: “The old Egyptian Building was enough to give anybody the shudders. It was a long, windowless affair and the interior was soberly decorated with choice replicas of the ancient art of the pyramids.”
Three stations shared quarters with local newspapers. KSD, the Post-Dispatch station, signed on at 12th and Olive in the newspaper’s office building. KXOK began life in the Star-Times building a couple blocks north on 12th. For a couple years starting in 1925, the St. Louis Star housed WIL on the top floor of its office building.
And there were a couple studio locations that were downright odd. WEW’s studios were once housed in the basement of the current Busch Stadium downtown. KFVE shared space with the Baldwin Piano Company at 1111 Olive. KMOX was temporarily housed in the old Anthony & Kuhn’s Brewery complex at 906 Sydney. WIBV had studios at the Green Mill Restaurant on West Main Street in Belleville. KXOK temporarily shared space with the Regional Justice Information Service in the West End. KDHX occupies an old bakery building in South St. Louis. KCFM temporarily broadcast from the top floor of Boatmen’s Bank at 324 North Broadway. Later KCFM relocated to a building that housed the owner’s music shop at 532 DeBaliviere. Then, after the station was sold, it was relocated to another bank building, Cass Federal Savings and Loan at Graham and Dunn Roads in Florissant. Other stations spent some time in the Missouri Bank Building, which had originally been the Post-Dispatch building at 12th and Olive: KATZ-AM and FM and WIL-AM and FM. KTRS put its studios in a commercial mall.
Perhaps the biggest irony in terms of facilities belongs to KWK. In the station’s infancy, owner Thomas Patrick Convey spent money to develop the transmitter site in Kirkwood, where he lived. He turned the land into a ‘country club’ for the station’s employees. Many years later, after the station had fallen on hard times, the studios were located for awhile in a shack at a junk yard in north St. Louis.
(Reprinted with permission of the St. Louis Journalism Review. Originally published 4/03)