(Clockwise from right)
unlike Soane's gloaming,
Otto Wagner's 1906
Postal Savings Bank in
Vienna employs glass and
polished steel to flood the
interior with light; Louis
Sullivan's Midwestern
banks return to Soane's
sepulchral model. Pictured
here is his 1914
Merchants' National Bank
at Grinnell, Iowa; the
Williamsburgh Savings
Bank Tower is still one of
the tallest buildings in
Brooklyn 90 years after
its completionThe Bank of England only differ ed in scale;
its first purpose-built h ome was a Palladian
mansion erect ed in 17 34. A century of
expansion followed as demand for its ser vices- and, with it, the institution's organisational
complexity- incr eased until, in 1833,
John Soane complet ed his 45-year programme
of transformation. The spooky classicism
of the interior sp aces achieved a more
profound mystification of the business than
that attempted by his mor e plodding peers,
who made do \vi.th the customar y solidity of
colu1nns. These Soane eroded, opting instead
for a kind of mysticism of light effects.
All that is solid melts into air - but on
a reassuring foundation of solid gold.
Classicism of various sorts long r emained
the convention for banks on both sides of the
Atlantic (and elsewhere), since, a s Pevsner
p ut s it, Gothic - touted as it was by moralist s
such as Ruskin and :Morris - was hardly an
appropriate look for usurer s. The Italianat e
palazzo style was long favoured for obvious
r easons and, later on, mor e free or indeed
florid examples of Bar oque-esque and
Mannerism-ism followed. Among the latter
can be included Lutyens' Midland Bank
buildings in London and Man chest er.
The t entative ver ticality of t he latter took
full flight in the US, where buildings such
as the Williamsburgh Savings Bank pushed
the palazzo to its ver t ical limits, extruding
cavernous banking halls along the way.
Earlier in the US, Greek had been the
preferred language of banker s (and as
Greek temples had originally incorporated
treasuries, why not). The early banks of
Philadelphia-suitably sober but r elat ively
modest - ended in vVashington gigant ism
in the 1930s. Ther e wer e also some more'The architectural
means of
appealing to
trust were
long held to be
references to
ancient temples'
eccentric examples along the way, such as the
two-faced Bower y Savings Bank by sex p est
St anford " Thite, and the wacky r otunda,
a kind of Wizard of Oz Palladianism, of the
Old Stone Bank in Providen ce. Such flashy
savings banks, the most lushly decorat ed in
t he history of t he type, wer e intended to
entice t he less wealthy to deposit - one may
speculate that suspicious, first-time saver s
were meant to be parted from the contents
of t heir mattresses by riotous gilding and
columns. Now that we are all utterly
depending on banks, such munificence has
made way for t he carpet tile.
The enduring prefer ence for 1narkers
of antiquity in banking architecture is no
myst er y, a s the \vhole business- p erhaps
unlike any other besides r eligion - d ep ends
entirely on belief. And the architectural
means of appealing to trust were long held>-:::!E
:5 <1:- (!) z
- a: <1:
:X:
l:i: UJ
CO 0
a:
- a: <1: