Merchants' National Bank
Louis Sullivan's Jewel Box
Photos taken in July 2011
Louis Sullivan's Jewel Box
Merchants' National Bank (1914) building is located at 833 Fourth Avenue in Grinnell, Iowa. It is one of a series of small banks designed by Louis Sullivan in the Midwest between 1909 and 1919. All of the banks are built of brick and for this structure he employed various shades of brick, ranging in color from blue-black to golden brown, giving it an overall reddish brown appearance. It was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1976.
Structurally the building is a rectangular box, with a magnificent main facade
and a windowed side facade.
Although this building is smaller than either his Owatonna or Cedar Rapids banks
it appears just as monumental. This is due largely to the oversized cartouche
that surrounds a circular window on the Fourth Street facade. Light is
introduced into the interior by a series of stained glass windows that alternate
with structural posts down the side of the building and through the colored
glass skylight that comprises much of the ceiling.
While the bank housed in the structure, and its location, Grinnell Iowa, did not
warrant national attention, yet the unveiling of a Louis Sullivan building was
given national coverage in the architectural press of the day and the Merchants'
Bank was thus featured in an eleven page spread in The Western Architect's
February 1916 edition.
As he did in his banks in Cedar Rapids and Sidney, Ohio, Sullivan used lions, or
at least a grotesque, winged version of a lion, as figurative decoration. This
creature is one of the very few figurative elements that can be found in the
architect's designs. (The angels in his Transportation Building and the Bayard-Condict
Building being other examples.)
Some of the plans and even the designs of the ornament were done by Sullivan's
draftsman Parker N. Berry, who was shortly thereafter to fall victim to the 1918
Spanish flu epidemic.
In the 1970s or early 1980s a city beautification project sponsored the planting
of several trees in front of the bank. Gebhard calls this an "unbelievable
decision" for the growing plants would obscure more and more of the amazing
facade. These plantings can be easily seen in the gallery pictures, taken in
1985.
In 2007 the city remodeled its downtown sidewalks and streets so the
intersections of the square had the "Jewelbox" appearance to them. The city also
put Planters at the four corners of the crossings which have the "Jewelbox"
engraved in them.
Between 2008 and 2009 one of the lions in front of the building was damaged.
Both lions have now been replaced.
Text from Wikipedia
windows exterior
windows interior
the bank
modern banking operation through the back opening