Interior Design highlights Block's new Square and Cash App office in St. Louis

The Square and Cash App office is a stunning adaptive reuse effort that melds modern design, historic urban fabric and a community-focused mission to create a remarkable new space in the heart of St. Louis. The bold new space helps the company expand its local workforce, recruit and retain top talent, and fuel growth strategies for the future.

In a nod to the incredible history of the Post-Dispatch building, the design team chose to leave the original newspaper printing press in its place as part of the rejuvenation effort. Now, the press is interwoven with a coffee bar and lounges for collaboration and socialization.

Our Olivia Gebben, project designer, tells Interior Design, “In these lounges, you can look up and literally touch the buttons and wheels that made the presses tick.”

Throughout the space, employees can choose where they work independently and meet with colleagues across an incredible diversity of spaces. The Square and Cash App office also features an all-hands space, a rooftop terrace, multilevel atria, employee amenity spaces and more.

“Block was looking to create a home for its employees,” said our Ken Crabiel, project director. “A place where they could be connected with one another in a variety of ways.”

Block also connected with numerous local artists across St. Louis to develop pieces that are now featured in the new workplace.

“Art is in the DNA of our company,” said Jay Scheinman, Block’s global municipal affairs lead. “Jack Dorsey and Jim McKelvey came up with the idea of Square when Jim couldn’t complete the sale of one of his glass pieces because he didn’t have the ability to take a credit card.”

Also of note, the building features Joseph Pulitzer’s former office, and the new design preserves this space. Keeping the space helped to further unite the Post-Dispatch Building to its exciting new future with Block.

“So often in design, you look at the physical form and can see the connections between the original building and the renovation,” Crabiel continues in the piece. “But sometimes there’s an underlying philosophical connection, too.” Pulitzer believed that providing information enabled readers to make responsible choices. “Block is centered on the same principle,” the architect says, “and we wanted that notion to have a presence in the new iteration of the Post-Dispatch building.”