First National Bank of Chicago V

< --Previous Up Next–>

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 V
Life Span: 1903-1970
Location: 38 S. Dearborn St, NW corner of Monroe and Dearborn
Architect: D. H. Burnham & Co.

Lakeside Annual Directory of the City of Chicago, 1904
First National Bank Bldg.—164 Dearborn n.w. cor. Monroe

Lakeside Business Directory of the City of Chicago, 1907
First National Bank (The).—nw. cor. Monroe

Lakeside Annual Directory of the City of Chicago, 1911
First National Bank—38 S. Dearborn and 68 W. Monroe.

Chicago Tribune, June 20, 1902

The First National Bank has made peace with the last of the tailor tenants in the Montauk block, and the work of tearing down the building, to make way for the first section of the bank’s proposed policy $3,000,000 building, will be begun immediately. No definite date is set for the completion of the section occupied by the Montauk, but it is hoped to have it finished by May of next year, when the bank will move in and the work of tearing down its present building, at the corner of Dearborn and Madison, will be commenced. D. H. Burnham & Co., who have prepared all the plans, will hasten the work as much as possible.

The exterior of the new building will be of granite, the exact hue not having yet been decided upon, but it will either be of gray or yellow shade. Some of the contracts have already been awarded.

The History of The First National Bank of Chicago, Henry C. Morris, 1902

The First National Bank originally occupied its present quarters at the northwest corner of Dearborn and Monroe streets in 1882. They were then considered ample for a long term of years. The National Safe Deposit Co., a subsidiary corporation, had leased the ground from the Board of Education for ninety-nine years, and had erected the edifice especially with a view to the accommodation of the principal institution. The arrangement on the part of the latter comprised the rental, for its offices, of the entire main floor, as designed for it, and such other room as might from time to time be required.

During the past twenty years the business of the bank has increased in an ever-ascending ratio, and gradually the space used by it has become more and more crowded—although within the last two or three years both the basement and some other portions of the building have been taken for various purposes until at length the necessity for relief by the construction of an entirely new edifice has become imperative.

While it is not possible at the present moment to give all the details of construction, and the interior arrangement of the edifice as it will in due time be completed, it may prove of interest, nevertheless, here to sketch in outline its main features. With this purpose in view the architects, D. H. Burnham & Co., have prepared a brief description, which reads:

Exterior

In general the design of the building is in the old Roman style. The first three floors, sixty feet in lieight, which are to be occupied by the bank, and its dependencies will be marked by a cornice supported on massive Doric pilasters, forty feet in height, inclosing the arched openings of the bank proper. The aggregate height of these three lower stories will be equal to that of an ordinary fivestory building. The banking room will thus be clearly indicated; its appearance will be imposing and in proportion to its magnitude. Above this point the exterior treatment will consist of windows simply spaced to suit the offices of the typical floors.

From the fourth story to a belt course at the fourteenth story the walls are plain, the only ornament being slightly projecting sill courses. The main pier lines that mark the division of the lower floors will continue up and terminate at the fifteenth and sixteenth stories in an arcade supporting the main cornice which is of the Corinthian order. This upper arcade is broad and simple and its deep reveal discloses the unusual thickness of the exterior structural piers of the building. The walls really extend up to and include the parapet, the cornices growing entirely out of them.

The design is severely simple in keeping with the natural quality of granite, which material is used for the entire fronts of the building. Good and impressive proportions are relied upon for general effect and merely ornamental treatment is everywhere avoided. The purpose is to suggest the strength and dignity of a great financial institution.

Entrances.—There will be two main entrances to the bank and office building. The principal one will be from Dearborn street. Here the vestibule will be sixty feet wide, entered by twelve doors. It will be eighty feet deep and forty-five feet in height, entirely finished in marble, and with the grand staircase of broad, easy steps ascending twelve feet from the street level to the banking-room floor. On each side of the staircase will be five elevators, connecting with all the floors to the top of the building. The entrance from Monroe street will be nearly as important. The vestibule here will be twenty-four feet wide by fifty feet deep, with seven elevators to the top of the building and a broad staircase to the bank.

Interior.—The typical floor plans are divided into offices, of modern sizes and arrangement, supplied with every convenience. There will be an interior corridor on every floor extending entirely around the building. Seventeen elevators and three staircases from the ground to the top of the structure will afford ample means of ingress and egress to the occupants. In every respect the edifice will be strictly modern, and will be equipped with all the latest conveniences and novelties which add so greatly to the accommodations furnished by city office buildings.

Banking-Room.—The main banking-room will occupy the entire first floor, twelve feet above the street, two hundred and thirty feet long, one hundred and ninety feet wide, and thirty-two feet high, together with an additional floor of corresponding area and fifteen feet in height immediately above it, and overlooking it through the central court. These stories will architecturally be treated as a unit. The main entrance by the grand staircase from Dearborn street will be through an archway opening immediately into the central court, which, measuring sixty by nmety feet, will be surrounded by an arcade, and roofed over at a height of fifty feet with a crystal plate glass dome, thus being brilliantly lighted. From this court broad staircases and private elevator will connect with the safe deposit department below and additional floors above.

Safety Deposit Vaults.—The National Safe Deposit Company will occupy sixteen thousand one hundred and four square feet of space on the ground floor, with its entrance through the vestibule on Dearborn street. The Safety Deposit Vault itself will measure forty-two by fifty feet, comprising an area of two thousand one hundred square feet, and will contain eighteen thousand boxes. Coupon-rooms, committee-rooms, and reception-rooms for men and women will be provided. The office, vestibule, and all other appointments will be thoroughly in keeping with the general tone of the building.

tobey

The foregoing account, while in many respects inadequate, and in its details incomplete, will still serve, it is hoped, to convey some general impression of the magnitude and character of the proposed edifice. During its erection business will be uninterruptedly continued, first in the old structure as now occupied until the first portion of the new building on the west half of the Monroe street frontage shall have been completed. The bank will then remove into this finished section ; the old building at the corner of Dearborn and Monroe streets will be demolished and the remainder of the new edifice completed. The work of razing the Montauk Block and the former Bradner Smith building has already been commenced. The section to be erected on this ground will, it is hoped, be finished within one year; the entire structure, as projected, will be ready for occupancy on or before May 1, 1904.

Chicago Tribune, April 8, 1928

First National Bank of Chicago advertisement includes a number of photographs that show the exteriors of the bank’s first three buildings, in addition to several interior views of the banks.

Architectural Record, January, 1906

The Building of the First National Bank of Chicago

A. C. David.
A bank which proposes to erect a permanent habitation on expensive land in a large city is confronted by two alternatives. It can either build a one or two-story structure for its own exclusive occupancy, or else it can utilize its expensive site to the uttermost by putting up a sky-scraper, the upper portion of which can be leased at large rentals. The selection of either one of these alternatives does not seem to depend upon clear and definite business reasons. The officers of banks, situated in the same parts of the same city, when confronted by the necessity of this decision reach under similar conditions entirely different conclusions. In New York Speyer Bros. erect a three-story building on Pine street just large enough for their own business, while Kuhn, Loeb & Co. prefer to build a twenty-story structure on the same street at about the same time. In a similar way the Park National and the Chemical National Banks of New York are content with low buildings, while the Hanover National and the International Banking Corporation elect to build as high as is economically possible on the sites which they own. So it is in Chicago. Banks like the Chicago National and the Illinois Trust & Savings Bank erect buildings, in which an elevator is no more necessary than it is in a private house, while the First National sees a larger profit in occupying only the lower floors of a seventeen-story sky-scraper. A corresponding divergence of policy is exhibited by the banks in all the large cities of the Union, and in advance of the actual decision, no one can tell what view the directors of a bank will take of the comparative economic merits of a high or a low banking office.

tobey

Whether, however, the officials of the bank elect to build a high or a low edifice, their decision either in the one direction or the other brings with it certain consequences. A bank which erects a building exclusively for its own occupancy has in the persons of its managers reached the conclusion, that the larger rent which it must thereby pay for its offices is well spent; and there are only two ways in which it can secure a good value for this larger expenditure. By erecting a low building in which the large general office runs for the most part up to the roof, it can sometimes obtain by means of skylights offices which are better lighted. Such is not necessarily the case, but the extreme desirability of plenty of good light for an office situated on the narrow, dark streets of a crowded city has undoubtedly had a great deal to do with the erection of low buildings by many banks. The other way, in which it can obtain some return for its larger expenditure on rent, is less palpable and perhaps more doubtful. The officials of many banks apparently believe that exclusive occupation of one building adds to the dignity and prestige of the bank as a public institution. Such a building constitutes, in their opinion, a more impressive advertisement of financial exuberance and stability than would be the most towering “sky-scraper,” and in order to make this advertisement the more impressive, they are willing to spend a great deal of money upon the architecture of their offices. It becomes generally an affair of marble columns, a dome, mural decorations, and details of palatial gorgeousness. If there is anything in the idea of the advertising value of an exclusive office, the idea certainly demands that the gold should not be spared in making the advertisement effective.

One gets the impression, however, that these domed, columned and gilded buildings somewhat overemphasize the institutional aspect of an important bank. A bank is at bottom a business concern like another, and propriety at least suggests that it should be as business-like in planning its habitation as it is lending its assets. No private investor would dream of erecting a two or three-story building upon property which was worth $100 a square foot or more, and if a bank assumes the same attitude in this respect toward the improvement of its property, it is surely taking the more business-like and sensible part. What strikes one about such a building as that of the First National Bank of Chicago, illustrated herewith, is just its appropriately business-like and sensible demeanor. Money has been freely spent in order to obtain good materials, every possible convenience and comfort, solid workmanship, and permanent results. The building is substantial and serviceable, and it obtains as much dignity from its utilitarian propriety as many other buildings obtain from classic orders and gilded domes. This kind of a structure is frankly a business office; it does not seek to disguise itself as a temple. No doubt, under certain circumstances, it is better for large and important banks to house themselves in an American version of a Renaissance church, but there is quite as much to be said from the strictly architectural point of view in favor of the edifice which meets a plain contemporary need in a plain contemporary fashion.

tobey

Among all the contemporary American architects there is no firm which has had as much experience in the design of “sky-scrapers” as Messrs. D. H. Burnham & Co., of Chicago, and there is also no firm which has adopted in making such designs a more definite formula. This formula has not been reached in a day or in a year. It has gradually been worked out in the Fuller, the Railway Exchange, the Wanamaker, and the other buildings which the firm has designed during the past few years. In none of these buildings is it embodied to better advantage than in the First National Bank Building of Chicago, and it is worth while to consider somewhat carefully just what the formula is, and what are its merits. Its chief object, which is wholly praiseworthy, appears to be to subordinate all the sub-divisions of the building and all its details to the dominant effect produced by the mass, the color and the salient vertical lines. There is no attempt to emphasize one part or episode of the building, as was done in so many of the earlier sky-scrapers, either by an elaborately ornamented entrance or by distinction of material, or by an attic plastered with bloated terra cotta detail. These methods of emphasis, which are or may be desirable in lower buildings, have no meaning or place in a structure which is seventeen stories high, and which is visible only from narrow abutting streets. On such a building, seen under such conditions, it is only the essential facts and relations which count.

tobey

The essential facts about a building seventeen stories high’and fronting two hundred feet or more on two different streets are its mass and its height. The mass is made effective by the warm solid color of the stone, the tone of which gives a dominant consistency to the effect of the whole pile. On the other hand, the height is emphasized by the grouping of the openings. The fagades are divided into a series of bays of equal width which are carried up to the top of the building and which are merely repeated along the frontages on both streets. This treatment has been criticized as monotonous and mechanical; but it is also effective because, in the simplest manner and by the use of the merely necessary openings, the salient architectural fact of the height of the structure has been stamped upon the facade. Furthermore, this monotonous system of-subdivision is functionally expressive of the fact that the floors of the building are actually divided into a succession of offices of approximately the same size and importance. It should be added that while the openings are used to bring out the vertical lines of the structure, all the projections on its front emphasize, on the contrary, what is in this case the almost equally important horizontal dimension. A strong course of stone separates the third from the fourth story, a weaker one the fourth from the fifth, and mere lines of stone divide all the intermediate stories one from another, while a sharp two-edged projection cuts the building between the fourteenth and fifteenth floors. The building is also surmounted by a cornice, but there has been no attempt to make the projections at or near the top of the building impressive by their mass and depth. Of course they throw shadows, but they are effective rather because of the sharp decisive lines which they make, than because of the saliency of the projection. The really effectual shadows at the top of the building have been obtained not by projections but by recesses. The reveals of the arches which terminate the window-openings have been made exceedingly deep; and the depth of these recesses not only reinforces the effect of the bays into which the front is divided, but really takes the place of a heavy cornice in crowning the building. By means of these shadows and by projections, both heavy and faint on the surface of the building, the monotonous succession of openings is tied together, and the two facades are properly and successfully aligned on the streets.

In spite of the fact that the officers of the First National Bank preferred to build a high rather than a low habitation, they have not been obliged to sacrifice either convenience of arrangement or sufficiency of light to the height of their building. The main office is one huge room, occupying the second floor of the building, including the area which above is thrown into the court. It is reached by a wide flight of stairs leading from the main entrance, and it is lighted not merely by the unusually high arched windows but by a skylight. Except on the darkest days, artificial illumination is unnecessary. The main banking office is handsomely and substantially, but by no means gaudily, finished; and this general description applies to such details as the furniture and to such rooms as those reserved for the president’s office and the directors’ meetings. Very little money has been spent upon mere show. The appearance of the place is business-like, prosperous, spacious, and above all substantial. That is practically all there is to be said about it, and that is enough. Such are the clothes which fit the business of a modern bank, and why ask for any other? From the aesthetic point of view, it is all somewhat dull; but from the practical point of view, it is appropriate and serviceable which is of the first importance.

The Building of the First National Bank of Chicago

Leave a Reply