On the Road is a weekday feature spotlighting reader photo submissions.
From the exotic to the familiar, whether you’re traveling or in your own backyard, we would love to see the world through your eyes.
frosty
I mentioned in one of my comments, I had a 18-200mm lens so I could get some good zoomed-in shots of the ornament, which resulted in way too many to fit into the ten photos in each OTR post. I’ve picked out some of the best for this post. Most are from the interior of the first bank I saw in Owatonna, MN, which was the one most richly ornamented. Next was both exterior and interior from Sidney, OH. The bank in Newark, OH had less ornament and I didn’t get to see the interior because it was under construction but I’m posting one example.
Office entrance sign
Interior upper corner
Electrolier detail
Mural of farmer
Ceiling ornament
Arch painting detail
Stained glass detail
Cast iron ornament in all of the woodwork above the offices
Detail of mosaic tile above entrance
Detail of the side exterior upper left corner
Planetjanet
Well, I learned something new. Never heard of an electrolier before. I would have just called it a chandelier. Lovely design.
Paul in Jacksonville
No buildings anywhere will ever be constructed with this kind of magical design. So sad.
jowriter
These are spectacular decorative details. Thank you for posting. No one could afford this type of ornament today, or more accurately, finance this in a commercial structure.
AM in NC
I have SO enjoyed this entire series. I learned so much, and it has made me want to visit these beautiful buildings. Thank you!!!
scribbler
Just stunning. Thanks for including these additional beautiful bank photos.
Marge
My ex boyfriend’s dad was an architect that worked on the renovation of Sullivan buildings in Chicago. I have a piece of metal work from the Carson-Pirie building. I am using it as the backsplash in my kitchen. I’d love to post a picture of it but I can’t figure out how to do that.
zhena gogolia
@Paul in Jacksonville: We were just saying that. Thanks, frosty!!!
zhena gogolia
@Marge: Write to WaterGirl — the addresses somewhere on the site. I’d love to see that!
watergirl — at — balloon-juice.com
(edited by WG to add the hyphen in balloon-juice)
frosty
Send it to WaterGirl; her email is on the site somewhere. Front Pagers can put pictures in comments but the rest of us can’t.
ETA: @zhena gogolia: LOL mind meld!
stinger
Amazing — especially the detail on the ceilings, that nobody would ever be able to really see (without telephoto lens).
tandem
Frosty, thanks so much for this series! I have traveled a fair bit in Italy and been amazed by the terra cotta decoration on buildings dating from the Renaissance; I had no idea that architects here used it on [relatively] modern buildings. You have given me something to research more deeply and to be on the lookout for. It’s much appreciated.
Mike in Oly
Love all these details. So amazing. Thanks for sharing all these with us.
Marge
@frosty: Thank you both. I sent an email to WaterGirl.
arrieve
I love these posts. Thank you so much for sharing.
mvr
Thank you for this! I’m an unreliable BJ reader as I tend to read when I’m not doing other things and we were on vacation for 3 weeks until this weekend. So I missed the earlier posts which I will have to go look up.
I like and am impressed by each photo, but I just love the stained glass.
There are pieces of ironwork from the Carson, Pirie, Scott building in Chicago in our local art museum here in Lincoln. I guess they were also liberated during a renovation of that building. It seems a bit of a shame to separate them.
I semi-regularly have a conference at the Palmer House Hotel in Chicago and always enjoy the chance to view the CPS building when I go as it is very close by.
Thanks again!
frosty
@mvr: WaterGirl made it easy to find all six of these posts when she created a category “frosty’s Bank Tour”. You can find it up top.
I emailed her and told her that now she’s required me to see the other five! I think I can see a couple if we go through Iowa next summer on the way to the Rockies. We’ll see!
Prescott Cactus
Thanks for this great pictorial !
Marge
@mvr: The piece I have sat in my garage for many years. I had no idea what it was but always loved it. When I renovated my kitchen I incorporated it in the design. Hopefully WaterGirl with be able to post the picture I sent to her.
MelissaM
I can’t imagine working in one of these buildings. They are stunning!
Old School
@zhena gogolia:
Forgot the hyphen:
watergirl — at — balloon-juice.com
WaterGirl
@Marge: If you send me the picture by email I can add it in the comments.
WaterGirl
@Marge: Got it!
WaterGirl
@frosty: This has been a really great series!
WaterGirl
From Marge:
I was trying to post this picture to the comments in the On the Road post. My ex-boyfriend’s father was an architect in Chicago. He worked on a restoration of the Carson-Pirie-Scott building. Not every piece of the original work was used. I have this piece that I used as the backsplash in my kitchen.
The first two words that came to mind when I saw the photo were “amazing” and “gorgeous”.
frosty
@WaterGirl: @Marge: Amazing and Gorgeous are just the beginning. You can never leave the house now!
Marge
@frosty: I told my kids to take me out of this house in a box.
Yutsano
@WaterGirl: That. Is. STUNNING! How in the world did Marge fit that in her kitchen?
KatKapCC
If I ever win the lottery, I’m doing fancy stuff like this to my new mansion.
KRK
Beautiful stuff! Thank you, frosty, for sharing these photos and introducing us to these wonderful buildings.
bluefoot
These photos are beautiful and amazing. I wish we still made buildings like this. A few years ago I was staying at the Marriott in downtown Syracuse, NY and it was full of details like this. It was gorgeous. (Also, the staff was AMAZING – helpful, kind, patient, worked their asses off with a hotel unexpectedly full because of a snowstorm.)
bluefoot
@Marge:
Holy crap, that’s stunning!
mvr
@frosty: Thanks!
And that seems like a good requirement! I’ve been meaning to visit the one in Iowa myself. It isn’t far from here really and I do drive through Iowa often enough.
mvr
@Marge: I’m surely not blaming you for hanging onto the piece. Or the museum. Just the guardians of the building for letting it go.
Hopefully I’ll see the picture down-thread!
Thanks!
mvr
So this prompted me to go to take a picture of the Sullivan ironwork in the sculpture garden at the Sheldon Museum in Lincoln. I could not find it. So I went in to ask about it. It turns out it was vandalized and they took it down to repair and figure out whether they could put it back out safely. Right now it is still in repair.
You can find a photo of the work – balusters from a stair – on the wayback machine at:
https://scarlet.unl.edu/scarlet/archive/2006/04/13/story15.html
Betty
I am thinking of the crafts people who contributed to these buildings. Is it likely such expertise is still around?
mvr
@Betty: Probably but not with the same numbers of people. One of my hobbies is woodworking, often with old tools. Another is restoring my old house bit by bit. There are still specialists who do these things for a living either as new art or restoration work. Also people who make tools for them and us hobbyists to use. In fact handsaw making has really taken off in the past couple of decades. And blacksmithing it still also a thing in many forms.
Probably what is harder to find is certain sorts of large production work, though even there the sculpture market probably keeps them in business.
Ruckus
@mvr:
It is very involved to insure compliance with modern building standards in very old buildings and buildings, and like most everything else in the world buildings have a lifetime. Some long, some far less than long. But like everything else in the world there are limits to usable building life. Some areas, say California have issues – here it’s earthquakes, that limit building life. If you’ve ever been in an earthquake getting up there in power, you’ll easily understand. That’s just one area where building design and build quality can really affect what a building’s overall cost to build is and adding a lot to that in the way of art can make it extremely costly.
WaterGirl
@Yutsano: Here it is from a distance so you can get a feel for the size.
frosty
@Betty: Yes, some of the terra cotta on the Newark bank was reconstructed. Good craft people are still out there.
frosty
@bluefoot: I just looked up the Syracuse Marriott. I don’t recognize the architect, but the building is designed as Base – Shaft – Capital, which was Sullivan’s innovative design for steel-framed skyscrapers. I go by Syracuse on the way to the Thousand Islands and now I’ll have to stop on the next trip.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marriott_Syracuse_Downtown