Starks Building

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The Starks Building is a tall, historic structure in downtown Louisville, Kentucky. It has 14 stories and sits at Fourth Street and Muhammad Ali Boulevard. Built in 1913 on the site of the old First Christian Church, it was financed by John Starks Rodes and designed by the Daniel Burnham firm from Chicago.

Standing about 202 feet high, the building blends Beaux-Arts details with Chicago School design. It’s known for cream-colored bricks and classical decorations like acanthus leaves, lion heads and urns. It began as a U-shaped building, but in 1926 a new wing was added to create a rectangular shape with a central light well. The central atrium included a courtyard and a skylight until 1984.

In 1953, Louisville’s first parking garage was added at the base, with more than 700 spaces on an adjoining lot facing Third Street.

Today the Starks Building is mixed-use, with retail, dining and offices. By 1997 it offered about 350,000 square feet of leasable space. The 1990s and 2000s saw many vacancies, with more than half empty around 2006. Long-time tenants included the Colonnade Cafeteria, Seng Jewelers and Rodes Clothing. Current tenants include the Business First of Louisville news publication, FoodCare (moved its headquarters here in 2012), and Mediaura. The Colonnade Cafeteria operated in the basement from 1926 to 2006, and Rodes Clothing was there from 1914 to 2004.

Ownership changed hands several times: the Starks family owned it until the mid-1980s, then sold to an investment group. In 1997 it was bought by Empire State Collateral, which defaulted and left Allstate in control in 2004. It was listed as Louisville’s 11th-largest office complex in 2004. Hertz Investment Group bought the building in 2006, and occupancy rose to about 71% by 2010. Eddie Merlot’s opened in a street-level space in 2009. The building is connected by a skyway to Fourth Street Live!, a nearby entertainment mall. In 2007, Cordish Company announced plans to expand the mall by leasing first-floor space in the Starks Building, but those plans were later abandoned.