{"id":5045,"date":"2013-06-10T01:13:24","date_gmt":"2013-06-10T05:13:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/phillyhistory.wpengine.com\/?p=5045"},"modified":"2013-06-10T14:50:10","modified_gmt":"2013-06-10T18:50:10","slug":"what-a-nineteenth-century-bank-should-look-like","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/2013\/06\/what-a-nineteenth-century-bank-should-look-like\/","title":{"rendered":"What a Nineteenth-Century Bank Should Look Like"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Philadelphia Saving Fund Society, 306 Walnut Street, 1915. (PhillyHistory.org)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Long before he designed the icon of American Democracy\u2014the dome of the U. S. Capital\u2014Thomas Ustick Walter<\/a> was certain about the power of architecture. In the 1830s, after finishing Moyamensing Prison<\/a> and while at work on Girard College<\/a>, Walter bemoaned the public\u2019s general ignorance. “If the mass of the people were generally well informed on the subject of architecture,\u201d he wrote \u201cnations would look to their Architects\u2026 for the means of handing down to ages yet unborn the story of their power and greatness.”<\/p>\n

At the same time, the two-decade old Philadelphia Saving Fund Society<\/a> launched a search for just that kind of certainty. What should their first permanent home look like? They wanted to get some of Walter\u2019s certainty in stone.<\/p>\n

Walter had already designed a couple of banks, though none in Philadelphia, and liked the language of the Greek Revival. He had proven his hand with this 1836 fa\u00e7ade<\/a> in West Chester and confirmed there once again what sophisticated urbanites knew: classicism meant stability and strength. Sure, churches adopting the style had to worry they were adopting the temples of pagans, but the only barrier for a bank, as they fell under the spell of classical design, was expense. Schools, too, hoped to echo ancient Greece in their buildings, but unless they had the fortunes of a Girard College, they had to do with less. With the wealth and trust of its depositors, the Philadelphia Saving Fund Society had no reason not<\/em> to go classical.<\/p>\n

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Philadelphia Saving Fund Society, 700 Walnut Street, 1927. (PhillyHistory.org)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The groundwork had already been laid by Benjamin Henry Latrobe in his Bank of Pennsylvania<\/a> and William Strickland in his Second Bank<\/a>. Both were based on temple designs in Stuart and Revett\u2019s Antiquities of Athens<\/em>.\u00a0 The final volume of that four-part classic on classicism had been published in 1816, the same year the Philadelphia Saving Fund Society was founded. By 1839, there was no remaining doubt: if you wanted a great institution, you had to make an entrance on marble steps, between authentic columns and capitals. Banks had to look like Greek Temples\u2014even if they had to be wedged into a row on busy Walnut Street.<\/p>\n

Times changed and so do styles. By 1869, when the Philadelphia Saving Fund Society needed a new and larger building, they commissioned Addison Hutton to design something fire-proof and burglar-proof, something \u201ccalculated to inspire the entire community with implicit faith in the solidity of the Institution.\u201d (.pdf<\/a>). A portico would have been dated then, but granite stolidity spoke loud and clear, and the new design worked.<\/p>\n

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Philadelphia Saving Fund Society, 11th Street and Lehigh Avenue, 1959. (PhillyHistory.org)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Thanks to the availability of jobs and loans, Philadelphia\u2019s bank of choice soon found itself facing a dilemma. As the 19th<\/sup>-century turned into the 20th<\/sup>, depositors lived and worked farther and farther away from the bank. By 1924, president James Willcox considered the wisdom of building branch banks<\/a>, an as-yet unproven amenity. He turned to the architectural firm of Mellor, Meigs & Howe<\/a> where George Howe had become the bank executives’ favorite designer of grand suburban homes (later jokingly called the \u201cWall Street Pastoral\u201d style). Howe delivered a pair of identical \u201cpolite, quiet little buildings, unobtrusive and tasteful,\u201d a \u201cNorth Office\u201d at 11th Street and Lehigh Avenue (illustrated) and a \u201cSouth Office<\/a>\u201d at Broad and McKean. As architectural historian William Jordy<\/a> later put it, the firm\u2019s \u201ccharacteristic suavity\u201d helped the Italian Renaissance look as natural as it could in Philadelphia\u2019s neighborhoods.\u00a0 With rusticated walls and nail-studded oak doors, Howe succeeded in creating a \u201cmagnified strongbox,\u201d but his generous windows also suggested a work space inside. Most of all, wrote Howe\u2019s biographer Robert A. M. Stern<\/a>, \u201cthe design conforms to \u2018accepted tradition\u2019 for banking architecture.\u201d<\/p>\n

But \u201caccepted tradition\u201d no longer meant as much as it once did. Two years after the new branch banks were up and running, Willcox asked Howe to add electric signs. At first the architect protested \u201cthe inappropriateness of such an anachronistic feature.\u201d The boss responded: \u201cIf my business will benefit by it, shouldn\u2019t I have it?\u201d Howe reconsidered, and saw the light. In the next few years, both<\/em> men would leave the past behind and go completely electric.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Long before he designed the icon of American Democracy\u2014the dome of the U. S. Capital\u2014Thomas Ustick Walter was certain about the power of architecture. In the 1830s, after finishing Moyamensing Prison and while at work on Girard College, Walter bemoaned the public\u2019s general ignorance. “If the mass of the people were generally well informed on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5045","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5045","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5045"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5045\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5045"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5045"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5045"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}