Sager Reeves Gallery, Berry Building, Walnut & Orr Street

Stephen Bybee
Columbia, MO
2022

This week I offer a tip of the hat and hope to bring a little additional awareness to the plight of our friends at Orr Street Studios by way of this photo. This photograph was taken during First Friday in December 2022 looking diagonally across Walnut Street at Sager Reeves Gallery, housed in the historic Berry Building. Built in 1925, the Berry Building originally served as a wholesale grocery warehouse and was purposely located close to the Wabash Railroad terminus. From its location on Walnut, Sager Reeves and Artlandish serve as a gateway to the North Village Arts District, where Orr Street Studios is a proud and active member. When Orr Street Studio was damaged in a fire last weekend, the community responded quickly with a fundraiser that has been passed around on Facebook and in other circles. I’ll paste a link to the fundraiser below in the comments. You might ask why I don’t present a night photograph of Orr Street Studios, since that is the topic of my narrative this week…good question. Orr Street and the adjacent Balsamo Warehouse are notoriously difficult to photograph at night. Because of the bold brick construction of the Berry Building, its sexy casement windows, its rectangular mass and simplicity, and its brilliantly illuminated ground floor during First Fridays…this view of the nearby Berry Building offers a much better image for my Friday morning photograph.