Missouri Botanical Garden to break ground on new visitor center

Per the Houston Herald, the Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis, will begin construction in January on a $92 million visitor center, garden officials announced Oct. 22.

The complex, called the Jack C. Taylor Visitor Center, is slated for a spring 2022 opening date. The center is named after the Taylor family, who donated “a lead gift” for the new center, while the rest of the center was privately funded, according to Peter Wyse Jackson, who is the garden’s president.

The current center, Ridgway Visitor Center, was built in 1982, and can accommodate 250,000 visitors a year. As the years go by, attendance has grown, and the center now accommodates nearly one million visitors, which sparked the need for a cleaner, bigger space.

The Ridgway Center was designed by Hellmuth, Obata & Kassabaum and contains 67,000 square feet. The old center has a glass and steel structure that mimics London’s Crystal Palace. The new center will be 90,000 square feet and will be built in the similar style of the old center, with extensions into the eastern parking lot and into the plaza area of the garden.

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