America's forgotten 'doom loop' city, where $205m skyscrapers are selling for under $4m and the decaying downtown has become a ghost town

St. Louis downtown has become a ghost town - with buildings boarded up and skyscrapers plummeting in value. 

Major cities like San Francisco have hit headlines amid concerns their urban districts are in the grip of a doom loop - but a new report by the Wall Street Journal revealed that St. Louis' decaying downtown is facing an even worse crisis.

Take, St Louis's largest office building - its 44-story AT&T tower - for example. In 2006 this prime real estate sold for $205 million. 

But that same now vacant skyscraper recently sold for around $3.5 million - a shocking 98 percent drop in value in less than two decades, the outlet reported. 

The Railway Exchange Building, once the crown jewel of downtown St. Louis with its Famous Barr department store and sprawling offices, is also now an empty relic with peeling paint. 

Since 2012 a collection of the region's largest office buildings have dropped nearly 24 percent in appraised value, according to a 2022 analysis by The St. Louis Business Journal. 

Local media have dubbed the trend in the midwestern city a 'real estate apocalypse' after 18 of the 25 largest office buildings shed $150 million.

The staggering decline is almost hard to believe for a metropolitan area that was the fourth largest in the United States between 1861 to 1903. 

But modern-day St. Louis was hit hard by the pandemic, with its population sinking to below 300,000 for the first time since the 1800s, according to the New York Times. This compares to nearly 400,000 people living in St. Louis back in 1990.