AC Hotel St. Louis Downtown

The Jefferson Arms building — built in 1904 to house World's Fair visitors, later run as a hotel until the 1970s, then a nursing home until 2006 — is being converted into a 225-room AC Hotel by Marriott with 235 apartments, expected to open in fall 2026 after years of delayed redevelopment.

The place

The hotel occupies the historic Jefferson Arms building at 415 N. Tucker Boulevard in downtown St. Louis, a Classical Revival landmark designed by Barnett, Haynes & Barnett and expanded in 1928, that had sat vacant since 2006.

The concept

Few St. Louis hotel projects carry as much history as this one: the building opened in 1904 as the Hotel Jefferson to house visitors to the Louisiana Purchase Exposition and the first US Olympic Games, operated as a hotel under Hilton and then Sheraton branding through the 1950s and 60s, closed as a hotel in the 1970s in favor of a nursing home, and then sat empty from 2006 until redevelopment began. Restoration St. Louis, run by developers Amrit and Amy Gill, is converting it into a mixed-use property combining a 225-room AC Hotel with 235 residential apartments, restoring a 6,900-square-foot ballroom with its original swan-motif décor, parquet floors and wraparound balcony along the way. The project restarted in 2023 after pandemic-era delays and is now tracking toward a fall 2026 opening, according to the destination marketing organization Explore St. Louis. It represents one of downtown St. Louis's largest single adaptive-reuse hotel projects of the decade, reactivating a building that had been a visible symbol of vacancy on Tucker Boulevard for nearly two decades.

Dining & wellness

Ground-floor plans include the restored 6,900-square-foot ballroom for events, plus retail and dining outlets reported to include a Greek restaurant, a bakery and a barber; specific hotel restaurant and bar names had not been announced as of the latest reporting.