'The spooky classicism
of Soane's interior spaces
achieved a more profound
mystification of the business
than that attempted by his
more plodding peers'
(Above) Soane's Bank of
England interiors, here
drawn by Jose ph Gandy,
were destroyed in the
1930s for Herbert Baker's
scheme. They produced a
mysterious image of the
financial basis of the statewas liberally decorat ed '~rith Medici family
emblems - essentially logos that sought to
r eassure local cust omer s by association with
the prestigious Medici brand. The rooms in
which such filial representatives conducted
the business of banking were usually located
towards the rear of the palazzi in which they
lived, for reasons of privacy and security; an
inventory of the home of a banker in Cremona
list s the contents of such a ro01n as including
'desks, small tables, stools, a cupboard with
drawer s for ar chiving material, boards for
supporting papers, three workbenches for
writing, and a table for counting money',
according to Lauren J acobi in The Architecture
of Banking in R enaissance Italy.
Banks for public use, by contrast, often
opened onto the street, in the manner of any
other early modern shop - as, for instance,
in the case of the Palazzo Cavalca.nti,built around 1390 in Florence, which housed
a number of shops and banks behind the
arches on its ground floor. While international
and local banks may generally have been
distinguished by their layouts, there were
no external architectural featur es that defined
banks in this period - one might add that
this has continued into the present,
with one important exception to which
I \vill come later.
A glimpse of how the banker's set-up mjght
have worked in practice in the 1 6th cent ury
was provided by Matthaus Schwarz, head
accountant of Jakob Fugger 'the rich'- the
German backer of Emper or Charles V and
most successful banker of his day (and
probably one of the richest men in history).
Schwarz had bjmself depicted in his place of
work and, in this drawing, we see the essential
desk as well as a filing system enumeratingen z(^0) -
t; .....
...J ...J
8
m <
- a:
(Below) the 63ft-tall hall
of the 1929 Williamsburgh
Savings Bank, by Robert
Helmer, is designed to
reassure the public.
An inscription reads:
'to our depositors past
and present ... by their
industry and thrift they
have ... maintained the
true spirit of American
democracy'. Like many
historic banks, it seeks
alternative usest he locations of some of the Fugger bank's
branches. This image sets out a spatial
network of capitals and capital, all tied
together by the information system tended
by the proud cler k.
' Vhen the world's second national bank was
established in London in 1694, with the aim
of funding a war against France, the local
sector was still characterised by private banks
rtm on a similar principle to the Florentine
banks of the three preceding centuries.
These were, in other words, usually housed in
mixed-use buildings in which the partner and
clerks lived above the 'shop'- this was indeed
how the banking hall was known, while the
offices wer e called the 'parlour', clearly
demonstrating the predominantly domestic
character of these buildings.
Vaults meanwhile, were located at the back
or in t he basement, for security reasons.