First a social club, then a business headquarters, next a University administrative center, and coming soon, a museum.

O’Donnell Hall has seen a little bit of everything.

The building, located at 3663 Lindell Blvd. was purchased by Saint Louis University in 1992 and previously housed Graduate School and the School of Public Health. Those departments have relocated to Verhaegen Hall and the Salus Center respectively so that that the building could be converted into an art gallery.

The University’s new gallery will contain both permanent and traveling exhibits and will also have an area for art created by students and staff.

Renovations to O’Donnell Hall began in August and are set to be completed by February 2002.

Bridget Fletcher, assistant to University President Lawrence Biondi, S.J., described the physical changes of the building: “The removal of cubicles and office walls to create open gallery spaces, installation of humidity controls and ultraviolet protection on the existing windows.”

This 101-year-old building is certainly no stranger to change.

The building spent the first quarter-century as the elegant clubhouse for the Saint Louis Club.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the Club was the focal point of St. Louis social life and counted among its members some of the most powerful businessmen of the time, with a strong representation from the banking, railroad and oil industries.

The Club decided to build a monumental clubhouse, and in 1896 held a competition to determine the designer and style of the building. The winning design, a French Revival mansion with a formal mansard roof, came from a New York architect.

When the building opened in 1900, the lavish interior was covered in marble, mosaics, hand-finished wood paneling and gold-leaf trim on sculptured plaster friezes and ceilings.

In January 1925, the building sustained a fire that damaged the third-floor ceiling and roof. The Saint Louis Club decided it would abandon the building because of the smoke and water damage, but local newspapers speculated that the members were displeased that the Scottish Rite Cathedral to the east and the Masonic Temple to the west were taking away from the grandeur of their own clubhouse.

Central States Life Insurance Company purchased the building in 1927, and while the company decided to keep the exterior of the clubhouse in its original form, it completely gutted the interior in order to repair fire damage and make the building more appropriate for an office setup.

The remodeling, which took more than a year, included the addition of a fourth floor under the mansard as well as several vaults for company records.

Central States Life insurance suffered financial difficulties in the 1930s and passed ownership of the building to the Commissioner of Insurance of the State of Missouri in 1937.

After a brief trusteeship, the building passed in 1941 to the Mutual Savings Life Insurance Company but once again saw a new tenant in 1946 when the F.W. Woolworth Company purchased the building.

Woolworth obtained the building to serve as the company’s South Central regional office and extensively renovated it.

Woolworth remodeled the basement area for a printing operation, made sample rooms on the second floor and added a new elevator and air conditioning.

Woolworth had the longest tenancy in the building, but it sold 3663 Lindell to Triple M redevelopment in 1983 because the Woolworth Company consolidated operations in Dallas.

Triple M rehabilitated the building once again to convert it into professional rental spaces for offices. Since 1984, the building has been known as the O’Donnell building, named after one of the principals in Triple M, Dr. Francis E. O’Donnell.

After taking full ownership of Triple M in 1987, O’Donnell added several recreational facilities to the building, including a health club in the basement.

In 1991, Biondi and O’Donnell began discussions concerning the potential sale of the building. They agreed that the University would acquire the building partly as a gift from O’Donnell and partly as a purchase. The title was transferred to SLU on Jan. 2, 1992.