Trivers won its second American Institute of Architects (AIA) Housing Award for its design of The Victor, a mixed-use multifamily community in St. Louis’ Downtown West neighborhood. Trivers earned its first AIA Housing Award in 2023 for the transformation of a commercial printing facility into Woodward Lofts in The Grove.
Now in its 25th year, the 2025 Housing Awards recognize exceptional multifamily housing designs throughout the United States. The five-person jury selected 10 projects, including The Victor, that show the world how beauty, safety, sustainability and comfort can come together.
When it was constructed in 1906, the Butler Brothers warehouse distribution building located in St. Louis’ Downtown West neighborhood was one of the largest reinforced concrete structures west of the Mississippi River. The 735,000-square-foot structure sat vacant for nearly three decades before Development Services Group (DSG) selected Trivers as lead architect and interior designer for the $130 million project that would transform it into The Victor. The building’s proximity to Energizer Park, grand size, long dormancy and potential to catalyze additional development made it ripe for revitalization.
“The Victor embodies the interplay between old and new, past and future,” said Trivers Principal Joel Fuoss, AIA, LEED AP. “Using five decades of adaptive reuse experience and creativity, we preserved as much of the building’s original structure as possible while breathing new life into it.”
Trivers and the design team restored the exterior brick to its original color, revitalized the building’s remaining terracotta cornice, and retained the original clam-shell style garage doors that once opened for horse-drawn shipping wagons. Interior elements pay homage to the building’s location in the Washington Avenue Historic District and on the former site of Harmonie Hall, home to the 1886 World Chess Championship. Repurposing the building’s existing concrete and masonry not only preserved its architectural heritage but also eliminated the need for carbon-intensive material extraction and production. The embodied carbon put into the structure nearly 120 years ago would take St. Louis’ Forest Park 100 years to offset if built today.
The Victor is now home to 384 spacious, sunlit apartments along with high-end amenities and retail and co-working spaces. As a testament to Trivers’ commitment to downtown St. Louis, the firm designed and moved into a new, 8,000 square-foot office on the ground floor of The Victor in 2024.
“Few projects have the power to transform an entire city block,” Fuoss said. “Reactivating this formerly dark and empty building from the inside out has sparked energy and vibrancy that is essential to a thriving urban core.”
In addition to the AIA Housing Award, The Victor has been recognized with a Distinguished Award in Preservation and Adaptive Reuse from AIA St. Louis, a Citation Award in Architecture from AIA Central States, and the 2024 Preserve Missouri Award from the Missouri Alliance for Historic Preservation.
