7-UP? No. B-1!

nce, St. Louis was home to two kinds of lemon-lime beverage., B-1 was first officed in a converted Lindell Boulevard mansion. That building had a flavor laboratory, florescent lighting (a novel amenity), and an exclusively blue-and-white design palette (the company colors). In the late ’40s, the company took this promotional photo, which was surely more effective than another failed campaign that B-1 attempted around the same time. “The B-1 Beverage Company has tried for some months to find an organ grinder for use in a promotional program,” the reported in 1948. The company reportedly searched near and far to no avail. Perhaps that failed connection with old St. Louis inspired the company: Two years later, B-1 abandoned its mansion on Lindell Boulevard and hired an architecture firm to build a Modernist-style headquarters on Hampton.