Classical Revival became the lasting style of choice for Pittsburgh banks in the 1890s, after a few decades in which architects had used the Second Empire and Richardsonian Romanesque styles in the design of banks in Downtown and various neighborhoods. In 1902, the firm of Beezer Brothers designed the Pennsylvania National Bank at Penn Avenue and Butler Street in Lawrenceville as a Classical Revival building, with its main storys brick courses and arched openings showing the influence of the Italian Renaissance subtype. The firm of Calhoun & Miller, whose partners both lived in Lawrenceville, constructed the building for an estimated $50,000. A Pittsburgh newspaper reported that the interior was to be finished in marble and mahogany. The Pennsylvania National Bank was established in 1890, and occupied an earlier bank building on the site for the following 12 years. The earlier building had been constructed for the Lawrence Savings Bank in about 1870. After the Lawrence Savings Bank failed in 1890, the new bank purchased its triangular corner lot, at what had been known as the Forks of the Road since the days of Stephen Foster. The Pennsylvania National Bank went under in the early 1930s, as many financial institutions did during the Great Depression. Its closing, predating FDIC insurance, devastated hundreds of local families. Sixty years later, when I rented a small house nearby on Polish Hill and asked neighbors about the family who had occupied the house before me, I learned that they had lost their life savings in the collapse of the Pennsylvania National Bank. The bank building had various uses after the Depression, and eventually sat vacant and deteriorating. In 1994, it was restored and returned to use by the Lawrenceville Development Corporation (now the Lawrenceville Corporation). Since that time, it has been the home of Desmone & Associates Architects.
Posted on: Sat, 11 Oct 2014 02:00:36 +0000
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