The building is part of the University City Plaza,[2] which was added to the National Register of Historic Places on March 7, 1975.

[3][4] The current University City City Hall building was built by magazine publisher and businessman Edward Gardner Lewis, a native of Connecticut who came to St. Louis, Missouri, in the late 1890s, selling insect extermination products and medicines that were said to be highly questionable.

The tract, located near the construction site of the World's Fair, would become the nucleus for the streetcar suburb of University City.

But Lewis' financial empire in Missouri collapsed amid charges of mail fraud, bankruptcy, and litigation, and by 1915, he had moved his base of operations to Atascadero, California.

It sits on an elevator platform that raises the light through a hatch in the roof; today it is accessed via a spiral staircase in the council chambers.

[12] It was designed by Herbert C. Chivers (1869–1946), a local architect who had helped draft plans for St. Louis' Union Station.