The Pulitzer Arts Foundation was established in 2001 by Emily Rauh Pulitzer, who—together with her husband Joseph Pulitzer Jr.—had originally sought to create a space in which to install works from their private collection. The Pulitzers commissioned Tadao Ando in the early 1990s to renovate an abandoned automobile factory and showroom in midtown St. Louis, which had been an entertainment district known as Grand Center (now known as the Grand Center Arts District). During the design phase of the Pulitzer's gallery, Joseph Jr. died from colon cancer, and the project was not realized. Emily Rauh Pulitzer later approached Ando again, and she commissioned the architect's first freestanding public building in the United States.