frosty's Bank Tour

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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.

On The Road – frosty – More Views of Ornament on Louis Sullivan BanksPost + Comments (40)

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As you can see from the first picture, this bank is undergoing restoration. It has been through several owners: the original bank, a trust company, a butcher shop, a jewelry store, and most recently an ice cream parlor. Each tenant modified the interior, usually badly. In 2013 the building was donated to the Licking County Foundation, which undertook several rounds of fundraising to restore the building. The basement and substructure was completed in 2016, the exterior facades in 2021, including removing a corner door and rebuilding the corner. The interior is being worked on now, expected to be complete in 2025.

This was Sullivan’s seventh and next-to-last bank commission. The exterior color scheme differs from his other banks, covered in gray-green terra cotta instead of red-brown brick. The ornamentation is similar however, and includes the same griffin from the Sidney Ohio bank.

On The Road – frosty – Home Building Association, Louis Sullivan, Newark, OHPost + Comments (21)

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The interior of this bank is not as elaborate as the one in Owatonna but it still includes the large expanse of stained glass for a well-lighted open space. Placing the vault at the forefront of the design was something that differentiated this bank from the others I saw on this trip.

On The Road – frosty – Peoples Federal Savings and Loan Association, Louis Sullivan, Sidney, OH. InteriorPost + Comments (21)

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This bank was our next stop, since we’re meandering through the Midwest. People’s was the seventh of the eight small-town banks that Sullivan designed, and it continues to operate as a bank. Like the Owattona bank, it has been designated a National Historic Landmark.

The following history is from Archipedia https://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/OH-01-149-0063

“LaFayette M. Studevant, founder of the Peoples Federal Savings and Loan Association, was looking for an architect who could combine beauty, public convenience, and advanced technology in the design for a new building his bank planned to erect in a prominent location in Sidney, across from the historic Shelby County Courthouse on the south side of Public Square. After Studevant visited the Home Building Association Bank that Louis H. Sullivan designed for the town of Newark, 100 miles east, he knew he’d found the right architect for his building in Sidney.

As in much of his work, Sullivan turned to the natural world to find inspiration for the organic colors and patterns that define his rich ornamentation. Architectural decorator Louis J. Millet translated Sullivan’s forms into frescoes and mosaics and clay modeler Kristian Schneider translated them into molds for plaster, metal, and terra-cotta.”

On The Road – frosty – Peoples Federal Savings and Loan Association, Louis Sullivan, Sidney, OH. ExteriorPost + Comments (12)

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The interior of the bank in the previous OTR includes two stained-glass windows designed by Louis J. Millet, murals by Oskar Gross, and four immense cast iron electroliers designed by Sullivan’s associate George Elmslie, who also designed much of the interior and exterior ornament. The interior has been described as a “Symphony of Color” using over 240 shades of yellow, red-orange, and green. People have described it as similar to entering a cathedral. I have to say that’s the way I felt too. The high ceiling, the light from the stained glass, and the expanse of the space give it the same feeling.

The interior was remodeled in 1940 when a local contractor attempted to modernize the bank and, in the process, destroyed terra-cotta decorative elements, installed fluorescent light fixtures, and sold Sullivan’s ornamental teller’s windows as scrap metal for eighty cents each. A subsequent remodeling in the 1950s restored much of the ornament and art and preserved the historic character. The teller windows are gone though.

On The Road – frosty – Farmer’s National Bank of Owatonna, Louis Sullivan. InteriorPost + Comments (23)

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On our way eastbound from North Dakota, we had to plan some stops in Midwestern states. I had a year of Architecture History as an undergrad and fell in love with Louis Sullivan’s work. Remembering that he ended his career designing banks in out-of-the-way small towns across the Midwest, I looked them up and we changed the itinerary to go by a couple of them, including the one in this post.

Louis Sullivan was one of the most famous architects in American history, working in Chicago at the turn of the last century. He was part of the Chicago School, known as the “father of the skyscraper” and a mentor to Frank Lloyd Wright. He was one of the first to see that steel-framed buildings could have their own form, and he designed them with a base, shaft, and capital, something that we see so often now that it doesn’t seem revolutionary. From there he took the plain and simple mass elements of the skyscraper and added ornament in iron or terra cotta, which became his trademark.

The Panic of 1893 caused a decline in large commissions. Sullivan himself went into a financial and emotional decline, during which his partnership broke up and Wright left his studio. In his later years he began doing work outside of Chicago and across the Midwest: banks, commercial buildings, and residences. He died alcoholic and bankrupt in 1924.

Between 1908 and 1920 he designed eight banks in what became known as Prairie Style, which he referred to as his “Jewel Boxes”, all of which are still standing. The bank in Owatonna was the first and most elaborate. It came about because the bank’s owner, musician-turned-banker Carl Bennett, wanted a building where farmers would feel comfortable, not a Classical Revival design derived from a Greek temple. He was also looking for a work of art and his search for an architect led him in 1906 to Louis Sullivan. The collaboration of patron and architect produced what many consider the finest small-town bank in America. Architectural historian Tom Martinson calls it one of the greatest buildings in American history, because it is unlike anything else before or since.

On The Road – frosty – Farmer’s National Bank of Owatonna, Louis Sullivan. ExteriorPost + Comments (59)