Iowa jewel box bank 3
September 6, 2025 at 1:00 PM by Dr. Drang
I was in Cedar Rapids Wednesday afternoon to see the final Louis Sullivan jewel box bank in Iowa. It was kind of disappointing but still had some nice details.
The first disappointment was that the bank is now a restaurant with the 80s-style name of Peppercorn.1 This means the interior will be very different from the original. I say “will be” because the second disappointment was that the restaurant was closed, I couldn’t see the interior for myself. I thought about killing a couple of hours around Cedar Rapids and having dinner at Peppercorn, but it just didn’t seem worth it. I could see the true Sullivan details on the exterior.
Which leads to the third disappointment. The decorative border around the entranceway is missing. You can see a slightly different color in that area where the border used to be.
The now-missing entrance details can be seen on the building’s Wikipedia page, in a photo taken about 20 years ago.
Let’s move on to the good stuff. There are several nice terracotta accent pieces on the front and side façades.
At the time of construction, the bank’s name was People’s Savings Bank, and you can see the stylized initials in the center of the piece. The rough texture is carried through on the horizontal pieces under the windows and on some other accent pieces above the windows.
The square terracotta decorations on the chimneys are geometric and also have that rough texture on the outside surfaces.
I like the changing depth of the central diagonal lines. They start out nearest to us at the corners but duck under the other diagonals as they run into the middle diamond.
You can see all but the lower bit of the stained glass windows on the front façade.
The figures on the tops of the pilasters are grotesque lions. I like these more than the gilded and less stylized lions at the entrance of the Grinnell bank.
The photos on the Wikipedia page show that both the square grille and the lions used to be part of the decoration above the entrance.
Finally, there’s the historic landmark plaque in the doorway.
Eventually, I’m going to travel east to see the three jewel box banks in Ohio and Indiana. I’m holding off until the restoration of the one in Newark, Ohio, is finished.
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Strictly speaking, if this were the 80s, Peppercorn would be the surname of the fictional owner, and the restaurant would be something like R.J. Peppercorn’s. Close enough. ↩
Iowa jewel box bank 2
September 3, 2025 at 9:29 PM by Dr. Drang
This morning I visited the Louis Sullivan jewel box bank in Grinnell, Iowa. Built in 1914, this one is known as the Merchant’s National Bank.
Like the others, it’s a National Historic Landmark.
Personally, I think Sullivan went overboard on the entranceway decoration here. The gigantic enclosure for the front stained glass window is too big for the building,
and the lions on either side of the entrance are heading into the realm of kitch.
I like decoration, but this is a far cry from “form follows function.”
The current lions, by the way, are reproductions, built after some vandalism to the originals. The originals were moved into the building. One of them is in pretty good shape,
while the other’s broken pieces are kept behind glass.
I prefer the long side of the building, with its repeated tall stained glass windows and columns.
The top edge of the building might be considered overdone,
but I think its distance from the viewer tones it down. The repeated elements over the plain windows on the front and side are considerably simpler because they’re closer to us.
As you can see, this building, like the one in Algona, is currently home to the local Chamber of Commerce. The difference is that this building used to be a bank, while Algona’s never was.
While it was still a bank, it got an addition that I think deserves some praise. Here, you can see the addition (which is still a bank) in context with the original building.
Three things I like about the addition:
- First, it doesn’t overwhelm the original; it’s actually smaller.
- Second, the repeated tall vertical windows reference the stained glass windows of the original.
- Third—and I’m sorry it’s partially blocked by the parked cars—the archway is reminiscent of the beautiful large arched windows of Sullivan’s Owatonna bank. Very nice.
Inside, you get a better view of the stained glass windows at the front and the side.
I don’t know if the pendant lighting is original, but it looks like it.
There’s a collage of images on a wall at the rear of the original building, next to the doors that lead into the addition. Most of them are old photos, but they also included some drawing excerpts, which I appreciated.
Too bad other people don’t see the beauty in title blocks.
Iowa jewel box bank 1
September 2, 2025 at 10:10 PM by Dr. Drang
With the Labor Day weekend behind me, I drove from Minnesota down into Algona, Iowa, to see the first of three Louis Sullivan jewel box banks in the Hawkeye State.
Strictly speaking, this isn’t—and never was—a bank. Wikipedia calls it the Henry Adams Building, and the plaque on the side calls it the Algona Land and Loan Office.
For much of its life, it was the home of the Druggists Mutual Insurance Company. It now contains the offices of the Algona Chamber of Commerce.
The pedestals with the pots are part of an entranceway that sits forward of the true front wall of the building. The terracotta squares at the two bottom corners are nicely detailed.
The windows on the long side of the building are decorated in a more geometric, less organic way.
A feature I especially liked is the decorative strip along the bottom of the wall.
According to the nice young woman working in the Chamber of Commerce office, virtually nothing of the interior—except maybe the tile floor, most of which is covered by carpeting—is original or even a restoration of the original, so I won’t show much of it. The front stained glass windows may be original,
and the stained glass windows along the side are apparently modeled on the originals.
This building is certainly a step below the palaces I saw in Columbus and Owatonna, but it still has some nice details. If a set of drawings exist somewhere, I’d like to see them to get a sense of what Sullivan intended for the interior.
Minnesota jewel box bank
August 28, 2025 at 10:02 PM by Dr. Drang
Today’s Louis Sullivan jewel box bank is the National Farmers’ Bank in Owatonna, Minnesota. I stopped here on the way up to the Twin Cities, where I’ll be visiting my daughter and going to the Minnesota State Fair.
This bank was designed and built about a decade before the one I saw yesterday in Columbus, Wisconsin. That one was the last jewel box Sullivan designed; this is the first one. The park across the street from the bank has sign with a brief history of the building.
The semicircular stained glass windows are similar to what we saw in Columbus, Wisconsin, but here there are two large windows on adjacent sides of the building.1 The exterior as a whole is more ornate, largely because of the color used in the terracotta pieces.
Inside, the large semicircles are repeated on the other sides of the building, but these are filled with murals instead of windows.
You can see part of the other mural behind the clock that faces you as you walk in the front door. The clock is above the teller area; there’s a mezzanine behind it.
From the mezzanine is great view of the front stained glass window, the enormous hanging light fixtures, and the decorative piece above the entrance.
A “B” motif can be found in many of the decorative elements. They’re a nod to the bank’s president, Carl Bennett, who commissioned Sullivan at a time when he was having trouble getting work.
In an hallway above and behind the mezzanine, a few of Sullivan’s blueprints have been laminated and mounted on the walls.
As before, I got a closeup of the title block.
Also, there’s a wonderful detail of the floor slab. While reinforced concrete had been used well before this building, it still wasn’t especially common. What I like about this detail is that it isn’t very detailed. The theory of reinforced concrete was in its infancy, but Sullivan did seem to know that he needed top reinforcement in the negative moment areas.
If things go according to plan, I’ll be visiting the three jewel box banks in Iowa next week.
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There are several other semicircular windows on the longer side of the building, but they’re not made of stained glass. ↩