First National Bank of Chicago IV

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The building number designations coincide with those given in the book, “The History of The First National Bank of Chicago,” by Henry C. Morris, Under the Authority of the President and the Board of Directors, 1902

First National Bank of Chicago IV
Life Span: 1882-1904
Location: 38 S. Dearborn St, NW corner of Monroe and Dearborn
Architect: Burling & Whitehouse

Lakeside Annual Directory of the City of Chicago, 1884
First National Bank Bldg.—Dearborn nw. cor. Monroe

Lakeside Business Directory of the City of Chicago, 1899
First National Bank (The) Samuel M Nickerson pres; James B Forgan v pres; Geo D Boulton 2d v pres; Richard J Street cash; Holmes Hoge asst cash; Frank E. Brown 2d asst cash 164 Dearborn tel Central-1503

Chicago Tribune, June 21, 1881

THE OLD POST-OFFICE.
The New First National Bank Building.
The tearing down of the old Post-Office building will be commenced to-day, and soon the site of some of Col. Haverly’s greatest Chicago triumphs will be no more. The temple of Thespis is to give way to one of the finest and most conspicuous business blocks in Chicago. The plans for the new First National Bank building have been completed, and the tearing down of the old and the building up of the new will be done by the Messrs. Mortimer and Tapper. The cost of the building will be in the neighborhood of $350,000. It will be six stories and basement, and the height from the sidewalk to the roof cornice will be 110 feet, one of the loftiest in Chicago, being some feet higher than the Portland Block. The building will have a frontage of 195 feet on Dearborn street and ninety-five on Monroe street. The basement will be used for safety-deposit vaults of the most approved pal terns and designs. The plane are exceedingly elaborate for this purpose. Besides the vaults, the engines, boilers, and machinery for the elevators will be placed in the basement. The first story will be fitted up for the use of the bank, the idea being to make it a model banking office with every convenience that experience and good taste can suggest. The remainder of the building will be fitted up as offices, and amply supplied with fire-proof vaults through-out. The basement and first-story will be constructed of cut Bedford stone, while the Dearborn and Monroe street fronts of the other five stories will be of St. Louis pressed brick, with trimmings. The west and north sides will be of Indiana pressed brick, the whole forming & beautiful and effective combination. There will be two main entrances and three elevators in the building, and broad and handsome stairways, which will be made brilliant by a large centre skylight. Only a portion of the old foundation can be used in the new building, which will be extended fifteen feet north and about the same distance west.

First National Bank of Chicago Building IV

Inter Ocean, November 25, 1882

At the close of business to day the First National Bank removes to its new building at the northwest corner of Dearborn and Monroe streets. Slowly and solidly the great structure has been made ready to receive its owners and their co-occupants, and naturally, as the king “enters into his own,” followed by such a goodly retinue. the guns of The Inter Ocean fire a Presidential salute to mark an epoch so auspicious in the architecture and business of the metropolis. Such a housewarming does not happen every day, and an event indeed it is for this bank, first in wealth and power, as in name and age, among the financial institutions of the entire West, to change its base.

The new building, whose progress to its present splendid completeness has been noted in this journal from time to time, stands on historic ground, und, as elsewhere seen in an interview in this article, suggests many well told reminiscences of the time when the majesty of government was there enthroned and, later, the ennobling genius of the stage. The First National Bank of Chicago could not worthily have had less august predecessors. In the bold simplicity, too, and towering solidness of the new walls the fitness and correspondence of things stand out conspicuously. Buskin’s dictum, that business blocks should be without undue ornamentation, has been obeyed, and in this happy illustration of correct commercial architecture his promised effect of “the grand,” arising from broad-sweeping stretches of unbroken masonry, has been the most impressively obtained. Smooth-dressed stone of a business gray for the first story, and above that, tier on tier, pressed brick, the color the deepest dun; cornices of stone again, and tastefully carved—such, with the two magnificent granite columns of blood-red flanking the great portal, is the outside.

And the inside—no bank in America, if in the world, not even the National Bank of England, has a room so long and wide and more perfectly appointed. Almost the entire first floor of the vast building is devoted to this noblest presence-room of King Finance. Light streams in from windows on three sides and down through the longest skylight in the Northwest; there are receding lines of pillars, business-like and fire-proof, yet symmetrical as the Giotto of Florence, and in fairest colors dight, there seems no end of long-drawn marble counters and wainscoting, heightening by their rich tints the cheerful effect of the black and white tilings of the floor; in the background are rows on rows of desks for the ledgers and accountants of millions of dollars daily: still further back, imbedded in depths of masonry. are the “strong boxes,” and at the Monroe street corners are the private offices, shut off, of the bank officers. The splendid hall needs only to be visited to have its uniqueness and pre-eminence among bank-rooms at once impressed.

This is as it should be; for the First National Bank of Chicago is the wealthiest, strongest, and in its local, National, and foreign business, and in its relations to our Western financial system the most conservative, as well as the most potential of our Western financial institutions, which like all legitimate enterprise is an outgrowth, not an invention, has combined two most essential points: It has secured the most convenient and commodious, lightest, and safest banking floor in America, by erecting, at a moderate cost, without extravagant expenditures in decoration, with an eye to safe and substantial accommodation, an office structure which yields a revenue to bring the real coat of rental to the bank (its own accommodations) within the most conservative limits.

Like all the recent office building architecture of New York and the Eastern cities, the First National Bank Building is of great height, the frontage of 190 feet on Dearborn and 95 on Monroe street, being graced by an altitude of 108 feet, six floors of extra high ceiling above the sidewalk. Yet by means of three constantly running elevators, located at the Dearborn street entrance, the upper floors are made as conveniently accessible as the first, the machines being of the same kind and make us are used in like buildings in New York. In all other respects, too, the offices of the building are models, and have naturally in many cases been the objects of no small competition among tenants to secure them. No building in the city has such perfectly lighted offices throughout its extent. And finally, as regards protection in both bank and office—for fire and burglar-proof protection is consulted equally in each, being made a corporate feature of the edifice from foundation to highest floor —it is perhaps the most perfect structure in the United States, with unquestionably the most complete and most impregnable banking outfit in the modern world. The following items in the protection equipment of the bank may be enumerated: One immense steel-lined vault for bank reserve; one large steel-lined vault for use of bank tellers; two mammoth steel-lined safe-deposit vaults; one large burglar-proof safe for reserve vaults; twelve burglar-proof safes for use of tellers; five sets of massive burglar-proof doors, each consisting of a ponderous outside and heavy folding inside doors connected with steel vestibules, into which the folding doors open, each set of these doors weighing from five to ten tons; seven sets of lighter burglar-proof doors, and forty-nine very handsome fire-proof doors complete the grand protective outfit.

Furthermore, in an ample area of the basement, the bank is rapidly completing the most extensive safety-deposit vaults in the city.

How High Buildings Are Utilized.
The problem in high buildings such as this, not only here, but throughout the country and in the large cities of the old world, has finally been solved by the introduction of the elevator. Until within a few years no one thought of building any class of buildings more than four or five stories high, at the outside, but now the rule is seven, eight, or even ten or twelve, and this has been made possible by the simplification of elevators, by the improvements which have been made in the machines themselves, and by the familiarity of the public with the use of them; and if one goes to New York and sees the enormous number of exceedingly high buildings which are being erected there, he wonders how it is all the stories are made available; but it he will step into any of those new and elegant structures he will find two things have been considered absolutely indispensable: First, to provide light in every portion of the buildings; and, secondly, to provide enough elevators to reach the upper stories quickly; so that any person who walks into the building can immediately walk into an elevator and be carried to any portion of the structure a few seconds, and he will find that these elevators are all together so that when he gets to the central station he is ready to take the first elevator that comes, and in this way it has been shown to capitalists that the upper stories are just as valuable as any others, and the rule now is to ask the same price for each story above the third.

Until within a very few years there were no office buildings in the country where more than one elevator, or at the outside, two, were used; now there are almost none constructed where less than two are used, and as many as eight or ten are put into some of the larger buildings in New York.

The managers of the First National Bank appreciated this situation, and have provided, an at the very front entrance of the building, three passenger elevators, running side by side. They run quickly, smoothly, and frequently, so shat the tenants are not obliged to stand any time in waiting to reach their offices from the first floor, and we understand that many tenants have gone from their old locations, where but one elevator was provided, to this building, simply because there were a number of elevators.

In the selection of the style of elevators required for such services, of course it was soon found that no machine but the Hale elevator was fully up to all the requirements; and the First National Bank certainly made no mistake in selecting this machine, which is also used in such buildings as the Montauk Block, the Burlington office building, the National Life, and any number of other buildings here, and in the Mills Building, Boreel Building, the United Bank Building, the Kelley Building, and in many of Vanderbilt’s and Astor’s buildings in New York City and throughout the whole country.

First National Bank of Chicago Building IV

This building- was erected on the site of the old Post Office and Custom House, destroyed by fire in 1871. After the fire the ruin was transformed into the Adelphi, afterward Haverly’s Theatre. The First National Bank secured a lease of the ground from the School Board, and erected a $500,000 block upon it in 1882.

The bank pays 6 per cent, on the value of the property. The building is six stories high, and is one of the most substantial structures in the country. The entire first floor is used by the bank, and is said to be the finest and largest banking room in the world.

Again to quote from Industrial Chicago:

The First National Bank building is a six-story and basement structure, Romanesque in style, with basement and first story in vermiculated stone and the upper stories in pressed brick; a Roman-Doric portico shows two polished granite columns on either side corresponding with pilasters carrying a heavy entablature and balustrade. In the central and corner pavilions the horizontal style of the recessed sections merges into the vertical. The portico extends to the level of the second principal floor, and piers in the corner project, corresponding with it, thus carrying the high basement and first floor in one story. The second and third stories are also carried in one by pilasters, and the fourth, fifth, and sixth are compressed into one story for architectural effect; the two windows of the sixth story in each corner pavilion and three in the central pavilion showing the round arch finishing a section. The cornice is becoming, and the parapets above it, in the pavilions, render the sky-line perfect. This house occupies the site of the ‘Honest Building’ which was restored after the fire and used up to 1882, when it was torn down. The bank hall, occupying the first floor, is lighted by a great court. While the mural decorations and furniture are of the highest class, they are lost in the business air which pervades this hall, so that to pick them out one must visit the bank with that sole object.

Rand McNally Bird’s Eye Views, 1892

⑨ The First National Bank Building, At the northwest corner of Dearborn and Monroe streets, occupies the site of the old Post Office Building. The building offers a spectacle of handsome proportions, combin- ing strength, durability, and great size. It is surrounded on all sides with light and air. Dimensions: On Dearborn Street, 192 feet to alley; on Monroe Street, 96 feet to alley; 100 feet high, with 6 stories and high base- ment. There are 3 elevators and 100 offices. It was erected in 1880, and is described among our notable high buildings. The bank inside is a fine sight. The remainder of the building is occupied by corporations, attorneys, leading real-estate operators, pro- moters, and financial men generally.

Inter Ocean, January 1, 1904

TO BE WRECKED IN 30 DAYS.
Demolition of Old Builings the Work of S. Kruz, Expert Wrecker.
The wrecking of a great building has arrived at the dignity of an art. It calls for intelligent system and great energy to tear down in thirty days what required a year to build up. S. Krug, expert wrecker and excavator, 167 Dearborn street, is demolishing the old First National Bank building, and he expects to have it leveled in one month. Mr. Krug wrecked the Montauk block, part of the site of the portion of the First National bank building completed, which, when it was first built, was the highest building in Chicago, and contained very heavy walls. He has wrecked for about all of the prominent buildings in Chicago In the last seven years, among then the Schlesinger & Mayer building (Bowen Building), which was razed in eleven days in very cold weather in January, 1903; the site of the Powers building, at Monroe street and Wabash avenue, the Argyle apartment building at Michigan and Jackson boulevards, to which the Railway Exchange is succeeding: the great Hibbard, Spencer & Bartlett building, South Water and State streets; the Chicago National Bank and Merchants’ Loan and Trust Company buildings, the buildings of the Metropolitan Elevated Railroad near Van Buren street, from Market street to Fifth avenue, the https://chicagology.com/rebuilding/rebuilding030/Tribune building, and many others, and in all cases those for whom the work was done as well as all well-known architects are cited as references to the satisfactory manner in which it was performed. In all the extremely dangerous work of tearing down great buildings, requiring hundreds of workmen, Mr. Krug has never had any serious accidents. Heretofore he has sold the salvage to general dealers, but he has lately opened a large yard at Wentworth avenue and Thirty-Fifth street, where the salvage is kept and from which it is sold. Mr. Krug is also president of the Krug Sand Company, one of the largest in its line in Chicago.

First National Bank of Chicago IV

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