"Banking Houses in the United States: The First Generation, 1781-1811"

Banking Houses in the United States: The First Generation, 1781-1811Author(s): Kenneth HafertepeSource: Winterthur Portfolio, Vol. 35, No. 1 (Spring, 2000), pp. 1-52Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum,Inc.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1215273 .Accessed: 11/05/2011 16:41

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Banking Houses

in the United States

The First Generation, 1781-1811

Kenneth Hafertepe

In the years between the founding of the Bank of North America in I 78 and the demise of the Bank of the United States in i 8i i, banks were established in most American cities. Lacking American precedents, professional architects such as Charles Bulfinch and Benjamin Henry Latrobe and amateurs such as Samuel BlodgetJr. looked to the Bank of England as a model. Banking houses required public space forfinancial transactions; private space for directors to deliberate about loans; and secure space for cash, bank notes, and securities. The Bank of the United States, one of the key American examples of this building type, was less a model to be imitated than the grandest example of a banking house, befitting its quasi-official status as a central bank. Its size and neoclassical details identified it as an institution of national importance; other banks mediated between images of institutional grandeur and local accessibility.

S THE UNITED STATES entered the 179os, both the federal government and the American banking system were in

their infancy. In Britain, banks as discrete institutions were no more than a century old; in America, they had been in existence for a mere ten years. The last decade of the eighteenth century and the first decade of the nineteenth, however, heralded a change in the United States. In 1791, when the Bank of the United States was chartered, there were but three banks; in 1811, when the charter of that institution expired, there were ninety. Such demand allowed for the creation of one of the most novel building types of the period-the banking house-although al-

Kenneth Hafertepe is assistant professor in the museum stud- ies department and director of academic programs at the Strecker Museum, Baylor University.

The author thanks the following individuals for their kind assistance: Daniel Abramson, Jeffrey Cohen, Abbott Lowell Cum- mings, Claire Dempsey, Frederic Detwiller, Kari Diethorn, Bill Flynt, J. Ritchie Garrison, J. Edward Hood, Mark Mastromarino, James O'Gorman, Jonathan Poston, Rob Saarnio, Pamela Scott, Earle Shettleworth, Damie Stillman, and the editorial staff of Win- terthur Portfolio.

? 2000 by The Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum, Inc. All rights reserved. 0084-0416/00/3501-0001$3.00

most all were based on one version or another of classical architecture.'

The American banking system arose from the extraordinary economic changes that had occurred over the preceding fifty years. The barter economy that had predominated in the early eighteenth century was giving way to one in which cash and credit played increasingly larger roles. The credit provided by newly founded banks facil- itated trade across international borders as well as the American consumption of imported goods- textiles, ceramics, and many other items. In addition, in the 179os that same access to credit fi- nanced the new industrial enterprises by which

' Bray Hammond, Banks and Politics in America: From the Revolu- tion to the Civil War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957), p. 145. The best survey of American bank buildings to date isJoel Stein and Caroline Levine, eds., Money Matters: A Critical Look at Bank Architecture (New York: McGraw-Hill for the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the Parnassus Foundation, 1990), pp. 15-29. See also Lois Severini, The Architecture of Finance: Early Wall Street (Ann Arbor, Mich.: UMI Research Press, 1983), which deals with New York banking houses and merchant exchanges up to the Civil War. The three banks in existence prior to 1791 were the Bank of North America (1781), Massachusetts First Bank of Boston (1784), and the Bank of New York (1784).

Winterthur Portfolio 35:1

American goods could compete with imported goods.2

Americans accustomed to the rhetoric of classical republicanism found much to worry about in the seeming luxuriousness of imported goods and in the way in which ownership of these goods seemed to blur long-standing class distinctions. In a largely rural and agricultural nation, banks were seen as instruments of commerce and industry-as entities opposed to agrarian interests. And in a nation with a newly formed federal government, many critics saw banks as corporations that Congress did not have the power to charter. At the same time, cautious foreign governments and private investors, who had seen America's er- ratic performance with regard to debt payment under the Articles of Confederation, looked to American banking houses, particularly the Bank of the United States, to provide a greater level of stability and predictability to the American financial system. Thus, the first generation of American banking houses had important business to perform.

The Bank of England: Inside and Out

The banking system in the United States was closely based on that in Great Britain, particularly on the model of the Bank of England. Tradition- ally, most financial services in Britain had been performed by merchants who provided loans in the form of credit; by goldsmiths who accepted deposits of cash and valuables and issued their own banking notes; and by scriveners who not only provided clean copies of legal documents but also performed title searches, title convey- ances, and mortgage brokering. In the early 169os the British government found itself deeply in debt due to William and Mary's war against Louis XIV of France. The Bank of England was founded in 1694 specifically to finance the national debt, but it also answered the need for an institution that would facilitate economic growth and regulate the many smaller local banks. The Bank of England was chartered as an artificial person-that is, a corporation. In the wake of its

2Kevin M. Sweeney, "High-Style Vernacular: Lifestyles of the Colonial Elite," and T. H. Breen, "'Baubles of Britain': The American and Consumer Revolutions of the Eighteenth Cen- tury," in Cary Carson, Ronald Hoffman, and PeterJ. Albert, eds., Of Consuming Interests: The Style of Life in the Eighteenth Century (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia for the United States Capitol Historical Society, 1994), pp. 1-58, 444-82.

founding, two other corporations were chartered: the East India Company, which enjoyed a monopoly in trade with Asia, and the South Sea Com- pany, which had a similar monopoly in the Afri- can slave trade. The collapse of the latter in 1720, a fiasco known as the South Sea Bubble, had the effect of making corporations (including banks) synonymous with corruption in the minds of many Englishmen, a fear that carried over to Americans.3

A careful examination of the Bank of England will help in understanding the essential architectural and financial features of a banking house. The original bank complex, completed in 1734, was designed by George Sampson, who since 1718 had been the clerk of the works at the Tower of London and Somerset House. Samp- son's plan was organized around two internal courtyards (marked "Court") and a rear yard (marked "Yard") (fig. 1). The key public space was the Pay Hall (marked "Hall"), which was not visible from the street and accessible only after passing through an arcade into the inner courtyard. The Pay Hall was a dramatic double-height room in which Ionic pilasters gave visual support to a coved ceiling (fig. 2). The room received light from two ranges of windows on the north wall. At the east end of the room was a Venetian window with additional lights in the relieving arch that sprung from the side lights; this window looked out into the churchyard of the adjacent St. Christopher le Stocks. On the opposite wall was a similarly patterned niche with a statue of King William in Roman military garb, sculpted by Henry Cheere.4

Two doors led from the Pay Hall to the bank's more private spaces. The door on the southeast opened into a skylit stair hall, which also served as a vestibule for the Directors' Room and its ad- joining Committee Room (directly to the north of the rear court). Both of these rooms were lit by the second court, which also provided light for

3H. Rooksby Steele and F. R. Yerbury, The Old Bank of En- gland, London (London: Ernest Benn, 1930), pp. 1-2; W. Marston Acres, The Bank of England from Within, i694-1900, 2 vols. (Lon- don: Oxford University Press, 1931); Hammond, Banks and Poli- tics in America, pp. 3-6; Forrest McDonald, Novus Ordo Seclorum: The Intellectual Origins of the Constitution (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1985), pp. 117-18; Edwin Green, Banking: An Illustrated History (New York: Rizzoli, 1989), pp. 31-53.

4 Steele and Yerbury, Old Bank of England, pp. 4-5, pls. 11- 13, as reproduced in Green, Banking: An Illustrated History, p. 5o. On Sampson, see Howard Colvin, A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects, i600-I840 (London: John Murray, 1978), pp. 711-12.

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Banking Houses in the United States

Fig. 1. Floor plan, Bank of England, London, 1734. From W. Marston Acres, The Bank of England from Within, I694-90oo, 2 vols. (London: Oxford Univer- sity Press, 1931).

the large Accountant's Office on the south side. Both the Accountant's Office and a private room for the accountant general across the hallway received light from the rear yard, a triangular space that contained several privies. The door on the southwest corner of the Pay Hall led into a windowless passage that emerged in the second court, near the doorways to the Cash Warehouse and Gold and Silver Warehouse (west of the rear court).

Sampson's facades for the bank reveal a close

study of the Palladian-style facade of Somerset House (then thought to be by Inigo Jones or his successor, John Webb) as well as a familiarity with the Palladian work of the last decade (fig. 3). The main facade was broad and shallow, with three central bays projecting forward. In these three

bays, four engaged Ionic columns rose above

three ground-floor arches, which provided access into passages that led into the first court: the central opening was wider, taller, and round-arched for carriage access; the side openings provided pedestrian access. On the courtyard side, an open arcade stretched across the facade of the court. On the south side of the courtyard was the Pay Hall. The court facade was equal in width to that of Threadneedle Street, although not as high. Four Corinthian columns supported a pediment in the center. The bank was thus clothed in full Palladian dignity. The Palladian style, however, was less influential on American banking houses than were the internal arrangements of the bank.5

In 1764 Sir Robert Taylor was named surveyor to the bank, perhaps on Sampson's death. Over the next decade Taylor dramatically enlarged the

building, providing a new main entrance from Bartholomew Lane on the west and additional interior accommodations (fig. 4). The new entrance opened into an oval-shape vestibule that led into a grand sixty-foot rotunda with a coffered

ceiling, where the "gentlemen stock-brokers" as- sembled each day between eleven and one. Four

skylit (and windowless) offices (marked "Stock" and "Office") flanked these spaces, all with vaulted ceilings supported by Corinthian columns in a manner not unlike the church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields (designed by James Gibbs, 1721-26). These rooms were the Transfer Of- fices, where exchanges of bank stock that had been agreed upon in the Rotunda could be formalized, and the Dividend Warrant Office, where stock dividends and lottery winnings were dis- bursed. Apparently the original placement of the Cash Warehouse and Gold and Silver Warehouse on an outer wall in the old building proved to be a concern because Taylor created two new and more secure spaces, a Treasury and a Strong Room.6

At the same time, Taylor created a new Direc- tors' Room, or Court Room, which looked out onto the former churchyard, now known as the Garden Court (fig. 5). Pairs of gilded Corinthian

5Acres, Bank of England from Within, 1:167-74, pl. 17 (plan of the bank in 1734), pls. 19, 20 (perspective views of 1739 and 1761).

6Acres, Bank of England from Within, 1:188-99. Acres also re- produces period plans and illustrations: pls. 27 (plan of Bank ca. 1770), 22 (Transfer Office), and 23 (Rotunda). Taylor appren- ticed as a sculptor under Henry Cheere and then studied in Rome; see Marcus Binney, Sir Robert Taylor: From Rococo to Neoclassi- cism (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1984); Colvin, Biographi- cal Dictionary of British Architects, pp. 815-18.

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Winterthur Portfolio 35:

Fig. 2. A. C. Pugin and Thomas Rowlandson, Pay Hall, Bank of England, London, 1732-34. From Rudolph Ackermann, Microcosm of London (London, 18o8). (Print collection, Lewis Walpole Li- brary, Yale University.) The structure in the center is an elaborate charcoal-burning stove.

columns, fluted and cabled, supported a vaulted arcade at the east and west entrances to the room. Three Venetian windows-based on Sampson's in the Pay Hall-looked out on the Garden Court; opposite these were three fireplaces with mantels in the antique style. Indeed, the walls and ceilings were covered with austere classical detailing, Roman in spirit, which had only recently been introduced to Britain by Robert and James Adam. The space formerly occupied by the Direc- tors' Room now became the Cashier's Office.7

An extraordinary pamphlet published in 1782, The Bank of England's Vade Mecum; or, Sure Guide, provides ample information as to how these spaces were used. Written by Thomas Morti- mer, identified only as "a Gentleman of the Bank," this booklet was "useful for all Persons who have any Money Matters to transact in the Hall of the Bank, &c. particularly those who are not practiced in that business" and was sold at

7Acres, Bank of England from Within, 1: pls. 24, 25 (Court Room and Garden Court). St. Christopher le Stocks was demolished in 1782.

various London bookshops, including Messrs. Richardson and Urquhart at the Royal Exchange, just across the street from the bank. The booklet informed the potential customer that bank notes to be cashed or exchanged could be endorsed on the east side of the Pay Hall at a freestanding desk that was furnished with pens, ink, and sand (fig. 6). Against the south wall, under the clock, was a high counter with "little rails" (turned balusters) at eye level. Behind this railing stood the cashiers and the entering clerks. The cashiers approved most transactions that were to take place, while the entering clerks issued new bank notes in return for old bank notes or for cash. Tellers, who sat at lower tables "under the Statue of King Wil- liam" or under the front windows at the north end of the hall, handled the cash. Nearby were freestanding tables for counting and examining money; two also had scales for weighing money.8

8 [Thomas Mortimer], The Bank of England's Vade Mecum; or, Sure Guide. .. by a Gentleman of the Bank (London: Printed for the author, 1782), title page. The following paragraphs are drawn from pp. 9-22.

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marked in the booklet, but it is unclear whether this was open to the general public or was exclu-

sively for staff. Customers wishing to remit a payment to a

correspondent in the country were sent to the

right end of the cashier's counter, which was the Post Bill Office. However, customers who wished to pay for their post bills by making a draft on the bank first had to visit the Drawing Office (on the left side upon entering the Pay Hall) for approval before going to the Post Bill Office. A draft on the bank was a check available "to Gentlemen who keep Cash at the Bank"-apparently a rare enough occurrence to require explaining. To cash a check, the customer had to get it approved at the Drawing Office and then pick up the cash from one of the tellers. Finally, a customer who had a bill due at the bank would make payments at the Bill Office "under the great window" on the east side of the Pay Hall. Thus the Pay Hall was the center of business activities at the bank, supported by a variety of office and meeting rooms for staff and directors and by secure areas for storage of cash reserves and institutional records. This model was to be followed by all early American banking houses.

Roots of the American Banking System

Fig. 3. Elevation, Bank of England, London, 1732-34. From William Maitland, History of London (London, 1739), pl. 19. (W. E. B. Du Bois Library, University of Massachusetts at Amherst.)

If a bank note was more than a year old or looked to have been tampered with, the customer took the southeast door into the passage that led to the Accountant's Office for approval before the cashier would accept it. If the entering clerks were busy, the customer could proceed down the same passage to the Chancery Office on the left or up the stairs to the Secretary's Office. The latter office was also the place to stop payment on a note or bill. Next to the Chancery Office was the Discount Office, which administered loans made

by the bank. (The discount was the bank's interest on the loan-for example, a customer bor- rowing i?,ooo at a 6 percent discount would receive ?940 but pay back ?1,ooo.) The same door from the Pay Hall was taken to make payments on loans at the Cashier's Office for Loan, Scrip, and Lottery. The nearby Coffee Room was also

In the colonial era, Americans had three possible options for obtaining financial credit. Perhaps most common was a loan from relatives, friends, or neighbors, which was most convenient but also most costly. A somewhat more formalized option was a loan from a local merchant or planter who was used to keeping accounts and had the where- withal to receive and dispense credit. The third

potential source was the public loan office, often known as the land bank, where borrowers offered their land as collateral for bills of credit-one of the two earliest forms of paper money in North America. Land banks operated under colonial charter and thus had at least semi-official status. At the same time, they made the process of at-

taining financial credit ever less personal, even as the amount of money that could be borrowed increased.9

In 1781, in the midst of the American Revolu- tion, the Bank of North America was established

9 On the 3-tier system of credit, see John J. McCusker and Russell R. Menard, The Economy of British America, 1607-1789 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press for the Institute of Early American History and Culture, 1985), pp. 334-37.

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Winterthur Portfolio 35:I

Fig. 4. Floor plan, Bank of England, London, 1770s. From W. Marston Acres, The Bank of England from Within, 1694-I900, 2 vols. (London: Oxford University Press, 1931), 1: pl. 27.

in Philadelphia. Just as the Bank of England had been founded out of England's need to finance the war with France, the Bank of North America was headed by merchants who were in favor of the revolution and were heavily involved in fi-

nancing the war debt. The directors of the bank chose as president Thomas Willing, who, with his business partner Robert Morris, oversaw one of the leading mercantile houses in Philadelphia. Willing served as mayor of Philadelphia, in Penn-

sylvania's provincial assembly, and then in the Second Continental Congress. During the revolution Morris became superintendent of finance of the Confederation of States; Willing, as president of the bank, loaned considerable amounts to the

revolutionary government. The Bank of North America had a staff of six: a cashier, teller, sub- teller, accountant, clerk, and porter.10

10 Burton Alva Konkle, Thomas Willing and the First American Financial System (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1937); Lawrence Lewis Jr., A History of the Bank of North America (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1882), pp. 37, 39. The cashier, Tench Francis, received $1,ooo a year, the porter only $160.

In 1784, just a year after the Treaty of Paris, two more banks were founded, one in New York and one in Boston. When Peter Roe Dalton was chosen accountant of the Massachusetts Bank in March 1784, the directors sent him to Philadel- phia "to make himself the master of the system of Accounts made use of in the Philadelphia Bank." While in Philadelphia Dalton purchased a "roll-

ing press" so that the Massachusetts Bank could

print its own notes and banking forms. Like the

Philadelphia bank, the Massachusetts Bank had six employees; the only difference was that the clerk of the bank in Boston was also the runner. The president of the Massachusetts Bank from

1786 to 1796 was William Philips, a native Bosto- nian, merchant, selectman, state representative, and patriot who was also one of the richest men in the city.11

At the Bank of New York, Gen. Alexander

1 N. S. B. Gras, The Massachusetts First National Bank of Boston, 1784-I934 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1937), pp. 17-18, 233, 237.

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Fig. 5. Thomas Malton, Court Room, Bank of England, London, late 1760s. From W. Marston Acres, The Bank of England from Within, i694- 0,oo, 2 vols. (London: Oxford University Press, 1931), 1: pl. 24. (W. E. B. Du Bois Library, University of Massachusetts at Amherst.)

Fig. 6. Plan of the Pay Hall, Bank of England, London, 1782. Based on description from [Thomas Mortimer], The Bank of England's Vade Mecum; or, Sure Guide ... by a Gentleman of the Bank (London: Printed for the author, 1782), pp. 5-6. (Drawing, Kenneth Hafertepe.)

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McDougall, a Scots sea captain, merchant, revolu-

tionary officer, and state senator, served as the first president. William Seton, who was cashier from 1784 to 1794, was also a Scot and a merchant. He had ties to the loyalist community; more important, he was a friend and confidant of Alexander Hamilton, who not only served as one of the directors of the bank from 1784 to 1788 but also wrote the constitution of that institution. Hamilton's influence notwithstanding, the Bank of New York also thought it prudent to send cashier Seton to Philadelphia to see how a bank operated.'2

These new institutions were not embraced by all Americans. In 1785 and 1786, the more radi- cal members of the Pennsylvania legislature at-

tempted to revoke the charter of the Bank of North America. Its critics claimed that the bank would promote social inequality, that its directors would become too powerful, and that the bank would encourage the flow of specie to Eu-

rope. John Witherspoon, a signer of the Declara- tion of Independence and president of the Col-

lege of New Jersey at Princeton, dealt with some of these issues in his Essay on Money, published in

1786. He noted the claims of critics that banks would decrease rather than enlarge credit, because of excessive interest rates, but countered with the fact that after the creation of banks in Scotland, interest rates there had actually gone down. He observed that in both Scotland and En- gland, manufactures and commerce "have been greatly promoted by the easy and regular meth- ods of obtaining credit from the public and private banks." James Wilson, another signer of the Declaration and an ally of Morris and Hamilton, defended the bank from a legal point of view, of- fering an early version of what would become the constitutional doctrine of implied powers-that certain powers of Congress, though not explicitly stated, could be inferred from the responsibilities given to that body. Although the dispute was acri- monious, the supporters of the bank prevailed.'3

Undoubtedly the most important develop- ment in the American financial system in the

12 Henry W. Domett, A History of the Bank of New York, 1784- 1884, 3d ed. (reprint, New York: Greenwood Press, 1969), pp. 11, 15-17, 122.

13 McDonald, Novus Ordo Seclorum, pp. 149-50; J. E. Crowley, This Sheba, Self: The Conceptualization of Economic Life in Eighteenth- Century America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974), pp. 150-52; John Witherspoon, Essay on Money as a Me- dium of Commerce (Philadelphia: Young, Stewart, and M'Culloch, 1786), pp. 49-50, 42; Geoffrey Seed, James Wilson: Scottish Intellec- tual and American Statesman (Millwood, N.Y: KTO Press, 1978), pp. 36-41.

1790S was the creation of the Bank of the United States. Hamilton, now President George Washing- ton's secretary of the treasury, proposed a national bank in a report of December 1790; he drafted the bill that was introduced into Congress early in January 1791. Hamilton's bank was quite clearly modeled on the Bank of England. He knew the Bank of England well; indeed, he was a stockholder in it, along with Washington, Benja- min Franklin, and Morris. Washington's stock came to him through his marriage to Martha Custis, and he retained those shares even while leading a revolution against the British King. He did not sell his shares until 1786.14

Hamilton's proposal quickly passed the Sen- ate, but in the House the bill drew criticism from

James Madison and other southern representa- tives who claimed that the Constitution did not explicitly give Congress the power to create corporations and that the bill was thus unconstitutional. Fisher Ames, the Federalist congressman from Massachusetts, insisted that Congress had the right to do whatever was necessary to accom- plish the end for which the Constitution had been adopted and that the bank would provide the nation with financial stability. After a week's debate, the bill passed the House by a substantial margin. President Washington then asked for the opinions of Attorney General Edmund Randolph and Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, who were both critical of the scheme. Hamilton re- sponded with his "Opinion on the Constitution- ality of a National Bank," which persuaded the president to sign the bill chartering the bank on

February 25.15 The Bank of the United States was a private

corporation governed by a board of directors chosen from among the stockholders. Its functions were to provide a safe storage place for supplies of gold, silver, and other valuables; to serve as the main depository of federal government funds; to facilitate mercantile business through the issu- ance of bank notes; and to encourage the growth of industry and commerce by judicious loans to individuals. In the course of operation, the bank had the power to rein in the sometimes overly liberal credit offered by private banks by demanding redemption of their notes. The Bank of the United States thus served as an unofficial central

14 Hammond, Banks and Politics in America, pp. 104, 114-43. 15 Hammond, Banks and Politics in America, pp. 114-18; Win-

fred E. A. Bernhard, Fisher Ames: Federalist and Statesman, I758- I808 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press for the Institute of Early American History and Culture, 1965), pp. 158- 84, esp. 169-72.

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bank, although such a function had not been anticipated by Hamilton. Although the bank was le- gally a private institution, from the beginning the United States government was a major stockholder; its initial subscription was for $2 million. The government was also one of the best customers in the loan office. By the end of 1795 it had borrowed $6.2 million, nearly two-thirds of the entire capital of the bank.16

When the Bank of the United States was organized in 1792, its stockholders elected as president Thomas Willing, the Philadelphia merchant and politician who had served as president of the Bank of North America. This move disturbed some New Englanders, who feared that Willing and his business partner, Morris, would be too influential and favor Philadelphia and the mid- Atlantic region. In anticipation, a group of Bos- ton stockholders nominated fourteen Bostonians for the first board of directors-which was to have twenty-five members-in order to ensure that a Boston branch bank would be created. George Cabot, Jonathan Mason Jr., Joseph Bar- rell, and Fisher Ames were elected to the board, though Ames declined to serve because of his recent reelection to Congress. The New England contingent achieved its goal of establishing a branch in Boston; Mason and Barrell were appointed directors, along with such other Boston heavy hitters as Christopher Gore, John Codman Jr., and Theodore Lyman. Mason, Gore, and Thomas Russell all resigned from the board of directors of the Massachusetts Bank to join that of the Boston branch of the Bank of the United States, and Peter Roe Dalton, who had been accountant of the former since 1785 and also a director since 1787, resigned to become cashier of the latter at a salary of $1,600 per year. The Bos- ton branch of the Bank of the United States was up and running byJune of 1792.17

With the creation of branch banks in Boston, New York, Baltimore, and Charleston in 1792, authority over the central bank shifted to Philadel- phia. By 1794 the board of directors consisted of six men from New York and seventeen from Phil- adelphia. A leading figure from the start was

16 Hammond, Banks and Politics in America, esp. pp. 72, 114- 43; John Thom Holdsworth, The First Bank of the United States (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1910), pp. 29- 36, 42-49; John Thom Holdsworth, Financing an Empire: History of Banking in Pennsylvania, 4 vols. (Chicago and Philadelphia: S.J. Clarke, 1928), 1:73-114.

7 Bernhard, Fisher Ames, pp. 177-80; "Directors of the U.S. Branch Bank," Columbian Centinel (Boston),January 28, 1792, p. 3; Gras, Massachusetts First National Bank, pp. 530-31.

William Bingham, a Philadelphia merchant who had been married to Anne Willing, daughter of Thomas Willing, since 1780. At that time Bing- ham had been deeply involved with Willing in the organization of the Bank of North of America and subsequently became a large investor in the Bank of the United States as well as an original director. The Binghams were also keenly interested in making architectural statements: their mansion house on Third Street was built in 1785-86 to the designs of a visiting British architect, John Plaw. A residence in or near Philadel- phia made practical sense in that a quorum of the directors was expected to be in Philadelphia on any Tuesday or Friday, when they voted on discounts-that is, to approve or deny loan applications. The staff of the bank consisted of cashier John Kean, assistant cashier George Simpson, two tellers, two bookkeepers, a discount clerk and his assistant, and a runner (or messenger). Thus the Bank of the United States was only a little larger than its American predecessors.18

In the meantime, more private banks were springing up. In addition to branches of the Bank of the United States, new banks opened their doors in Charleston, South Carolina; Albany, New York; Portsmouth, New Hampshire; Boston and Salem, Massachusetts; and Hartford, New Haven, and New London, Connecticut, in 1792 alone. One of these was the Union Bank in Boston, which was founded in an increasingly competitive and intensely political atmosphere. When the commissioners of the new District of Columbia entrusted Samuel BlodgetJr., a merchant of Bos- ton and Philadelphia, to deposit $10,000 in the newly opened Boston branch, he took the liberty of splitting the $1o,ooo, depositing half in the branch of the Bank of the United States and half in the Union Bank, of which he was a founder.19

Blodget was a heavy investor in real estate in

8 Charles E. Peterson, "Carpenters' Hall," in Luther P. Eisenhart, ed., Historic Philadelphia: From the Founding until the Early Nineteenth Century, Transactions of the American Philosophical So- ciety, 43, pt. i (Philadelphia: By the society, 1953), p. 106, fig. 6, which illustrates the bank's notice from the Philadelphia directory of 1794; Robert C. Alberts, The Golden Voyage: The Life and Times of William Bingham, 1752-I804 (Boston: Houghton Mif- flin, 1969), pp. 91-97, o16, 221. Bingham was elected to suc- ceed Morris as one of Pennsylvania's U.S. senators in 1795. On the Bingham house, see Damie Stillman, "City Living, Federal Style," in Catherine E. Hutchins, ed., Everyday Life in the Early Re- public (Winterthur, Del.: Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Mu- seum, 1994), pp. 140-43.

19 Hammond, Banks and Politics in America, p. 144; Samuel BlodgetJr. to ThomasJefferson,June 25, 1792, in Julian P. Boyd et al., eds., The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, 27 vols., vol. 24 ed. John Catanzariti, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1950- ), pp. 119-20.

9


the nascent District of Columbia and also helped to establish banks and insurance companies in Boston, Philadelphia, and Washington. He wrote to ThomasJefferson to explain that the founding of the Union Bank "has been effected on a plan of mine with the assistance of Mr. S. Adams, Dr. Jarvis, Mr. Austin, and the 'Old Whigs.'" Samuel Adams and two of his closest political allies, Charles Jarvis and Benjamin Austin, all had revolutionary credentials that were impeccable. More recently they had become alienated from the Washington administration in Philadelphia and from the ruling Federalist elite in Boston, finding themselves in an uneasy alliance with Jefferson and the Democratic Republicans. Indeed, Austin was the opponent of Federalist Congressman Fisher Ames in the elections of 1790 and 1792. Blodget was none-too-subtly tellingJefferson that he and his business associates were sympathetic to the Republican cause, even as they were setting up a bank, which was an anathema to Jefferson and his agrarian followers.20

When Blodget told Jefferson that he had been involved in the founding of the Union Bank, he knew he was engaging in an activity of which Jef- ferson disapproved and so attempted to put the best possible spin on it. He noted that one-third of the capital for the bank was subscribed by the state of Massachusetts and that the bank was founded "in order some say to counteract in part the too great Influence of the U.S. Bank and its Branches intending fast toward the consolidation of the State Governments, &c." If any argument would get Jefferson to approve of a bank, this would be it. Blodget presented the Union Bank to Jefferson as a political and economic force that would check the power of the Bank of the United States. That power was more anticipated than ac- tual; President Washington had signed the con- gressional act chartering the bank only in Febru- ary 1792, but Blodget knew that Jefferson and other Republicans suspected banks as being agents of the wealthy mercantile class.21

While Blodget's letter was in the mail, Jeffer- son was writing to James Madison suggesting that

20 Blodget to Jefferson, June 25, 1792, in Boyd, Papers of

Thomas Jefferson, 24:119-20; The Dictionary of American Biography, s. v. "Austin, Benjamin"; Clifford K. Shipton, ed., Biographical Sketches of Those Who Attended Harvard College in the Classes 1764- 1767, vol. 16 of Sibley's Harvard Graduates (Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1972), pp. 376-83; Bernhard, FisherAmes, pp. 159-61, 204-7.

21 Blodget to Jefferson, June 25, 1792, in Boyd, Papers of Thomas Jefferson, 24:119-20.

a bank be founded in Richmond to counteract a proposed branch bank of the United States. "Could not a counter-bank be set up to befriend the Agricultural man by letting him have money on a deposit of tobacco notes, or even wheat, for a short time, and would not such a bank enlist the legislature in its favor, and against the Treasury Bank?" By October, however, Jefferson had changed his mind about a state bank, calling it "objectionable highly, and unworthy of the Vir- ginia assembly." A counter-bank, he argued, rec- ognized the existence of the Bank of the United States, and the position of Virginia should be that the power of chartering banks and corporations had not been given to the federal government; that the Bank of the United States was, therefore, unconstitutional; and that it should be abolished. "A bank of opposition, while it is a recognition of the one opposed, will absolutely fail in Virginia." Jefferson thus would not have accepted Blodget's argument in favor of the Union Bank of Boston as a counter-bank as long as the Bank of the United States was in existence. But in spite of Jefferson's antipathy toward banks, the state of Virginia authorized one for Alexandria in 1793.22

Blodget was also one of the founders of a bank in Georgetown. With Benjamin Stoddert, another large investor in district lands, he founded the Bank of Columbia, the first private bank in the District of Columbia. The state of Maryland chartered the bank in December 1793, authorizing it to raise $1 million for capital, much less than the $10 million that Congress had allowed the Bank of the United States to raise but double the $500,000 that Virginia had recently authorized the Bank of Alexandria to raise. The charter also permitted-indeed, practically invited-the capital commissioners, acting for the government, to subscribe for up to two thousand shares in the bank. This would have amounted to 20 percent of the institution's capital, but the commissioners actually purchased little more than half of that. Blodget served as the bank's president for its first year of operation.23

22 ThomasJefferson toJames Madison,July 3, 1792 and Octo- ber 1, 1792, in Boyd, Papers of ThomasJefferson, 24:151-52, 432- 33;Jefferson did not receive Blodget's letter of June 25 untilJuly 11 (see p. 120).

23John Joseph Walsh, Early Banks in the District of Columbia, 1792-1818 (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1940), pp. 59-76. On the bank building, see Daniel D. Reiff, Washington Architecture, I791-1861 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, 1971), pp. 65-67, fig. 86; Talbot Ham- lin, Benjamin Henry Latrobe (New York: Oxford University Press, 1955), p. 348.

10


Another bank with a state charter was the Bank of Pennsylvania, founded in 1793 through the efforts of Albert Gallatin, then a republican state legislator and later secretary of the treasury under presidents Jefferson and Madison. The state of Pennsylvania subscribed for one-third of the bank's capital, and it was soon the largest state-chartered bank in the country. Ten years later, the Bank of Philadelphia was founded by merchants in need of smaller loans for shorter pe- riods of time than were available elsewhere. The bank was modeled on the Merchant's Bank in New York, which was founded that same year with articles of association written by Hamilton. The Federalist-controlled Merchant's Bank quickly became embroiled in a bitter dispute with the Republican-controlled Bank of the Manhattan Company, and so too the Bank of Philadelphia with the Bank of Pennsylvania, with each refusing to accept the other's notes. Politics also ruled in Albany, where the New York State Bank was chartered in 1803 as a Republican counter to the Bank of Albany, which was in the hands of the Federalists.24

While banks were proliferating, critics of these new institutions were not silent. In 1794 John Taylor of Caroline published An Enquiry into the Principles and Tendency of Certain Public Measures. The Virginia congressman and philosopher of agrarianism denied that merchants were produc- tive members of the economic order; he considered a bank to be nothing more than the tool of merchants. He went so far as to argue that banking was a form of theft or taxation, claiming that any farmer or artisan who used bank notes was virtually paying interest to the stockholders of the bank.25

After the initial chartering of the Bank of the United States and its branches, most of the growth in banking occurred at the state and local levels. By 1820 there were eight banks in Boston alone, and many more dotted the countryside. The continued growth disturbed Fisher Ames, who had spoken eloquently in favor of chartering the Bank of the United States in 1792. He wrote in 1804 that "the spirit of banking is a perfect influenza," noting that Dedham, Roxbury, and other communities were petitioning for charters,

24 Hammond, Banks and Politics in America, pp. 158-61,

164-65. 5 John Taylor, An Enquiry into the Principles and Tendency of Cer-

tain Public Measures (Philadelphia: Dobson, 1794); McDonald, No- vus Ordo Seclorum, pp. 129-31.

though he thought that several opponents would unite to contest Roxbury's charter. He claimed that he wanted to charter "a bank in my barn- yard, and wish to be erected into a corporation sole, to take deposits of corn, for my pigs."26

In the first decade of the new century, Blodget produced two of the earliest American works on political economy, his 1801 pamphlet Thoughts on the Increasing Wealth and National Economy of the United States of America, and his 1806 book Econom- ica. Blodget believed that there was no contradic- tion between America as an agricultural nation and a commercial nation, and he saw banks as performing a crucial role in the economy. In Thoughts he praised Hamilton's report on public credit for its "sagacity and foresight." Blodget argued that cheap and extensive lands in the United States would give a much higher return for labor than the lands in Great Britain. He proposed a policy of mercantile expansionism and urged the government to borrow from other countries and to maintain a constantly increasing money supply.27

Blodget argued that mankind is by nature gre- garious and social but also restless and quarrel- some, which necessitates social ties to preserve order, amity, and peace. The principal social ties, he wrote, are kinship, legal, cultural (the arts and sciences), and economic. He noted that various economic associations were more numerous in England than in America, citing "funded debt, national and state banks, insurance companies, canal and turnpike" as well as the East India and other mercantile companies. These institutions "so linked and riveted together" people of all classes that they might be the British government's best defense against revolution.28

With regard to legal ties, Blodget was even more committed to a strong central government than was Hamilton, repeatedly characterizing himself as a "statist." In Economica Blodget expressed his great admiration for Jean Baptiste

26 Timothy Dwight, Travels in New England and New York, ed.

Barbara M. Solomon, 4 vols. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, Belknap Press, 1969), 1:360; Fisher Ames to Thomas Dwight, January 15, 1804, in Seth Ames, ed., The Works of Fisher Ames, 2 vols. (Boston: Little, Brown, 1854): 1:337; Robert Blair St. George, Conversing by Signs: Poetics of Implication in Colonial New England Culture (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998), pp. 316-17.

27 [Samuel BlodgetJr.], Thoughts on the Increasing Wealth and National Economy of the United States of America (Washington, D.C.: Way and Groff, 1801 ), p. 20. Samuel BlodgetJr., Economica: A Sta- tistical Manual for the United States of America (1806; reprint, New York: A. M. Kelly, 1964).

28 Blodget, Economica, p. 12.

1 1


Colbert, minister of finance to Louis XIV from 1661 until his death in 1683. In An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith had criticized Colbert for embracing "all the prejudices of the mercantile system, in its nature and essence a system of restraint and regula- tion." Smith contended that "instead of allowing every man to pursue his own interest in his own way, upon the liberal plan of equality, liberty and justice," the French finance minister "bestowed upon certain branches of industry extraordinary privileges, while he laid others under as extraordinary restraints." Blodget came to the defense of "the great Colbert," insisting that Smith relied on the "nonsensical evidence" of those "who wanted to make the world believe that there was an agricultural interest opposed to the commercial interest of a country." Though Blodget praised Col- bert's mercantile policies, he did not endorse the absolute monarchy that Colbert served. Nonethe- less, Blodget never explained how he, as a "statist," would provide checks against an overly powerful central government.29

Blodget was generally admiring of Smith's Wealth of Nations, which, he commented, "drew together a mass of excellent materials, in a smaller compass than had ever been done, except by the editors of an Encyclopedia." Blodget even excerpted almost an entire page of the publica- tion for his notes on banking in Economica; however, in a footnote he commented that "Dr. Smith wrote his elaborate and highly useful work before the business of banking was well under- stood; it is now found that a bank, to be perfectly secure, ought never to loan double its capital." Ac- tually, Blodget had misunderstood Smith, a fact pointed out by Erick Bollmann in his Paragraphs on Banks, published in 1810. Bollmann noted that Smith wrote "of the cash means of a bank, not its capital, which would imply all its property in the business. The capital of the United States Bank in the present instance, was ten million dollars. Its cash means were only six hundred and fifty thousand dollars." Characteristically, Blod- get was so focused on the "big picture" that he

29 Blodget, Economica, pp. 6-7; Adam Smith, An Inquiry into

the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776; reprint, New York: Random House, 1937), pp. 627-28. Blodget was also an admirer of Les Invalides, the military hospital built in Paris during Colbert's administration, and suggested that a "grand hospital" should be built in the District of Columbia "for every remaining invalid who served faithfully for more than one year at any period of our revolutionary war" (Economica, p. 21).

neglected to carefully read (or reread) Smith before criticizing him in print. Although Bollmann and Blodget disagreed on this specific point, the two were united in fundamental agreement on Smith's economic theory and on the importance of banks for the promotion of industry and support of the government.30

Banks were absolutely a key feature of Blod- get's economic vision for America. He urged the federal and state governments to subscribe to at least one bank in each large town, "for many truly republican and political reasons, as well as for the aid of the revenue." He cautioned, however, that the government should have no regula- tory powers over these banks other than to in- quire as to the present amount of specie they held in order to assess the wealth of the nation. He noted that in Massachusetts, Shay's Rebellion occurred because the state government had failed to pay attention to the amount of money in circu- lation and that many farmers thus found it impos- sible to pay their taxes. Banks could be a bulwark against class warfare and against wars between city and country, not only in Britain but in America as well. Though Blodget opined that the central government should not regulate local banks, he did not make clear whether the central bank might not perform that function, as, indeed, it eventually did. His image of a bank in every town suggests that he was less concerned with the incul- cation of republican virtue than with providing economic opportunity to all citizens, a philosophy more liberal than classically republican.31

Blodget's characterization of himself as a "statist" put him at odds with Hamilton and most Federalists, much less Jefferson, Madison, and their followers. But Blodget's interests were not so much political or legal as commercial and cultural. In this regard, he saw the Bank of the United States as crucial to his agenda in two re- spects: as an institution he hoped that it would promote economic expansion both commercial and agricultural; as a building he hoped that it heralded American attention to the arts and that it would inspire further artistic growth.

30 Blodget, Economica, pp. 162, 7; Erick Bollmann, Paragraphs on Banks (Philadelphia: C and A Conrad, 1810), pp. 33-34. Boll- mann was a friend and business partner of Benjamin Henry La- trobe; see Edward C. Carter II et al., eds., TheJournals of Benjamin Henry Latrobe, 1799--1820: From Philadelphia to New Orleans, 3 vols. (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press for the Maryland His- torical Society, 1980), 3:8.

31 Blodget, Economica, pp. 12-13.

12

Banking Houses in the United States 13

Designers of Banking Houses in the United States

Though most designers of American banking houses had not traveled abroad, at least three were familiar with Europe. British-born Benjamin Henry Latrobe had studied architecture with S. P. Cockerell in London before taking up his own practice in 1790. He was in London when John Soane completed his first major room at the Bank of England, the Bank Stock Office (1792). Soane was just then developing his personal style of stripped-down classical ornament and dramatic domes and vaulting, elements that seem to have appealed to Latrobe. When he immigrated to the United States in 1796, Latrobe worked in Rich- mond, Virginia, for the better part of two years before moving to Philadelphia. In 1803 Jefferson appointed him Surveyor of the Public Buildings of the United States, in which capacity Latrobe designed most of the interiors of the U.S. Capitol. Latrobe designed the Bank of Pennsylvania and the Bank of Philadelphia, and, late in his career, the State Bank of Louisiana in New Orleans.32

Charles Bulfinch was a well-connected Boston gentleman who at first designed buildings as a public service and then turned to architecture as a career. His father was a physician, trained at Harvard and in London and Edinburgh; his mother was a member of the wealthy Apthorp family. The younger Bulfinch also attended Har- vard, graduating in 1781. From 1785 to 1787 he traveled in Britain and on the Continent, guided by an itinerary drawn up by the American minister to France, Thomas Jefferson. By age thirty- five, Bulfinch had already provided designs for new state houses for Connecticut and Massachu- setts. He went on to design five banks in Boston, including the Boston branch of the Bank of the United States; one in Salem; and possibly one in Worcester.33

32 The classic biography is Hamlin, Benjamin Henry Latrobe; for Latrobe's architecture, the new standard is Jeffrey A. Cohen and Charles E. Brownell, The Architectural Drawings of Benjamin Henry Latrobe 2 vols. (New Haven: Yale University Press for the Maryland Historical Society and the American Philosophical Society, 1994); on the Bank Stock Office, see John Summerson, "Soane: The Man and the Style," in Frank Russell, ed., John Soane (Lon- don: Architectural Monographs and Academy Editions, 1983), pp. 11-15.

33 Ellen Susan Bulfinch, The Life and Letters of Charles Bulfinch, Architect (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1896), pp. 19-24, 41-53; Harold Kirker, The Architecture of Charles Bulfinch (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1969), pp. 1-16, 385.

Although Blodget designed no more than a handful of buildings, a mere fraction of the out- put of Bulfinch or Latrobe, he won the honor of providing the design for the Bank of the United States in Philadelphia. A native of New Hamp- shire, Blodget visited Europe while on mercantile business with his father in 1784 and again in 1790, when he made architecture and planning a particular study. It was while in Europe that Blodget began to dream of a new national capital for the United States and began to develop plans of his own, adapted "from the best points only of the ancient and modern cities of the old world." He also prepared plans for a national university, which he later stated were "designed in part at the Hague, and completed at Oxford, where he had all the universities of ancient and modern times to guide his pencil: from these he borrowed and rejected agreeably to the opinions of the best informed friends he could meet."34

Blodget was well acquainted with gentleman architects, professional designers, and practical builders. He counted Bulfinch as a friend. He met William Thornton in Philadelphia in the early 179os, and the two became great friends, collaborating on projects both architectural and financial. In 1793 Blodget served as superintendent for the District of Columbia, and was thus privy to the selection of Thornton's plan for the U.S. Capitol and to the subsequent controversy between Thornton and Stephen Hallet, his disap- pointed competitor. In 1806 Blodget noted that Thornton had received the premium for the Cap- itol but that many deviations from Thornton's plans were made by "the several ingenious gentlemen who have superintended the work." Nev- ertheless, he characterized the edifice as "a truly sublime and beautiful building," which suggests that his taste was for a late Georgian style with an overlay of neoclassical detailing. Blodget also worked with James Hoban, the Irish-born architect of the President's House who drew up de-

34 Matthew Baigell has suggested that James Hoban designed the bank, but Beatrice Garvan has nominated Christopher Myers. I have found no documentation to support either claim; see Mat- thew Baigell, "James Hoban and the First Bank of the United States," Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 28, no. 2 (May 1969): 135-36; Beatrice Garvan, Federal Philadelphia, 1785- I825: The Athens of the Western World (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1987), pp. 38-39. Biographical information on Blodget is limited; the best source is his own book Economica; on his European travels, see pp. 22-23. Wells Bennett wrote the entry in the Dictionary of American Biography, s. v. "Blodgett, Samuel, Jr.," which I have updated in American National Biography (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), s. v. "Blodgett, Samuel, Jr."


signs for a hotel that Blodget hoped to offer as the grand prize in a lottery to finance the public buildings of the district.35

One other American who traveled abroad and owned numerous architectural books may have designed an early American banking house. Ga- briel Manigault-a Charleston, South Carolina, lawyer and amateur architect-studied in Geneva and London in the 177os. During the next thirty years he acquired a substantial number of architectural books, including works byJohn Plaw, Wil- liam Pain, James Paine, and John Soane. The design of the Charleston branch of the Bank of the United States has been attributed to him, although that attribution is by no means conclusive. The builders of that banking house were Edward M'Grath (or McGrath) and Jo- seph Nicholson, who were Charleston carpenters, and Andrew Gordon, a Scottish-born bricklayer. McGrath and Nicholson may have developed the design on their own.36

McGrath and Nicholson were more typical of the designers of the first generation of banking houses. Master builders tended to rise through the ranks from apprentice to journeyman to master and almost never had the opportunity to travel abroad. These men gained their knowledge of design from visits to the larger American cities and from European-and, later, American-architectural books. In New England, a new generation of builder-architects religiously followed the federal style of Charles Bulfinch. When Alexan- der Parris designed the Portland Bank in Maine in 1806, he had had five year's experience as a master builder in Portland and was in the early

35 Blodget, Economica, appendix, p. iii. On the Capitol compe-

tition, see Wells Bennett, "Stephen Hallet and His Designs for the National Capitol, 1791-94," Journal of the American Institute of Architects 4, no. 7 (July 1916): 293-95; Reiff, Washington Architec- ture, pp. 21-22; Pamela Scott, Temple of Liberty: Building the Capitol for a New Nation (New York: Oxford University Press in coopera- tion with the Library of Congress, 1995), pp. 6-11, 36-37. On Blodget's hotel, see Wilhelmus Bogart Bryan, A History of the Na- tional Capital, 2 vols. (New York: Macmillan, 1914), 1:194, 205- 8, 226-27; National Capital Planning Commission, Worthy of the Nation: The History of Planningfor the National Capital (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1977), p. 40; James M. Goode, Capital Losses: A Cultural History of Washington's Destroyed Buildings (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1979), pp. 160-61.

36 Beatrice St. Julien Ravenel, Architects of Charleston (Charles- ton, S.C.: Carolina Art Association, 1945), pp. 53-68, 97, 274- 75. Ravenel notes that the Bank of the United States in Charles- ton was attributed to Manigault by his grandsons, Louis and Gabriel E. Manigault, in "The Manigault Family from 1665 to 1886," Transactions of the Huguenot Society of South Carolina 4 (1897): 83. In 1802 McGrath entered the competition for the South Carolina College.

stages of what was to prove to be a distinguished career as an architect. John Leffingwell, the designer of the Hartford Bank in Connecticut in 1811, had overseen the construction of Bul- finch's State House in Hartford years before, but he never had the extensive practice of Asher Ben- jamin or Parris. BradburyJohnson of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, who may well have designed the New Hampshire Bank, seems to have had no direct contact with Bulfinch but nevertheless inter- nalized many of the principles of the federal style.37

Philip Hooker was a native of Worcester County, Massachusetts, but moved with his family to Albany, New York, when he was still a child. He may well have worked as a house-carpenter in New York City for a few years, but he is not known to have traveled farther than New Jersey and Berkshire County in Massachusetts. His knowledge of architecture came from practical experience and from books; he designed the New York State Bank in Albany in 1803. He is known to have acquired Abraham Swan's Carpenter's Com- plete Instructor in 1797, the year he began work in Albany. In Baltimore, Robert Cary Long's hori- zon stretched at least as far as Philadelphia, but perhaps more important for him was the collection of the newly founded Baltimore Library Company, from which Long checked out such volumes as The Works in Architecture of R. and J. Adam, John Soane's Sketches in Architecture, and Owen Biddle's Young Carpenter's Assistant. Hook- er's ownership of Swan, a retitled edition of a book first published in 1759, suggests a conservative taste, while Long's reading ranged from one of the prime texts of British neoclassicism to an early work by a new generation of neoclassicists to the first original architectural pattern book published in Philadelphia. All these were within the bounds of the classical tradition, but Adam,

37 ArthurJ. Gerrier, "Alexander Parris, 1780-1852," in Earle G. Shettleworth and Roger G. Reed, eds., A Biographical Directory of Architects in Maine, 7 vols. (Augusta: Maine Historic Preservation Commission, 1987), 4: -6. James Leo Garvin, "Academic Archi- tecture and the Building Trades in the Piscataqua Region of New Hampshire and Maine, 1715-1815" (Ph.D. diss., Boston Univer- sity, 1983), pp. 399-402; William N. Hosley Jr., "Connecticut State House," in Gerald W. R. Ward and William N. HosleyJr., eds., The Great River: Art and Society of the Connecticut Valley, 1635- 1820 (Hartford, Conn.: Wadsworth Atheneum, 1985), pp. 121- 24. Garvin notes that Charles W. Brewster attributed the design for the New Hampshire Bank to Portsmouth merchant Eliphalet Ladd; see Charles W. Brewster, Rambles about Portsmouth, 2d ed. (Portsmouth, N.H.: Lewis W. Brewster, 1873), p. 242; but Garvin makes a strong case for Johnson, who also designed and worked on the nearby New Hampshire Fire and Marine Insurance Com- pany building.

14


Soane, and Biddle each offered his own version of Roman classicism.38

Getting Under Way: The 178os

All of the earliest American banks adapted preexisting buildings for their offices. In Philadelphia in 1781, the Bank of North America rented and later bought from Tench Francis (a brother-in- law of Thomas Willing) a three-story brick house on the north side of Chestnut Street just west of Third Street and two blocks east of the State House. The changes made before the bank could open its doors consisted of installing counters, vaults, and offices. The first floor had a single, squarish main room, with three small apartments created by a boarding about four feet high with turned balusters on the top. These cubicles were for a Discount Room and offices for the president and cashier. In addition, a counter in the middle of the room ran nearly its entire length. A large vault with iron doors was on the west side of the room, and similar vaults were on the two floors above it. Presumably the first floor vault was the day vault, and its contents were transferred at the end of each business day to separate vaults for cash and for the books. As at the Bank of En- gland, the cashier stood behind a partition with balusters through which a customer could pass a transaction. The spaces provided for the president and for the Discount Room were more spe- cialized spaces at the Bank of England. Still, a teller and sub-teller would have staffed the counter, which probably would have backed up to the west wall (and thus the vault), since the tellers were responsible for handling cash transactions.39

In 1784 the Bank of New York started opera-

38 Douglas G. Bucher et al., A Neat Plain Modern Stile: Philip

Hooker and His Contemporaries, I 796-i836 (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press for Emerson Gallery, Hamilton College, 1993), pp. 24, 26, 31-34; Robert L. Alexander, "The Union Bank, by Long after Soane," Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 22, no. 3 (October 1963): 135-38; Robert L. Alexan- der, "Architectural Books in Baltimore in the Early Nineteenth Century" (paper prepared for the 1997 Deerfield/Wellesley Sym- posium on American Cultural History), Office of Academic Pro- grams, Historic Deerfield. Robert Adam and James Adam, The Works in Architecture of R. and J. Adam, Esquires, 3 vols. (London, 1773-79, 1822); John Soane, Sketches in Architecture, Containing Plans and Elevations of Cottages, Villas, and Other Useful Buildings (London: Taylor, Holborn, 1793); Owen Biddle, The Young Car- penter's Assistant; or, A System of Architecture Adapted to the Style of Building of the United States (Philadelphia: B. Johnson, 1805).

39 Lewis, History of the Bank of North America, pp. 38-39.

tions in the former house of William Walton, a wealthy merchant whose three-story yellow brick mansion had been built in 1752. Walton's house was on Queen (now Pearl) Street several blocks north of Wall Street, the future home of the bank. After three years the bank purchased and moved into 11 Hanover Street, where cashier Wil- liam Seton lived in the upper story. The bank remained in this location for ten years. Clearly the mansion house of a wealthy merchant was seen as an appropriate location for a financial institution.40

The Massachusetts Bank, also founded in 1784, was initially located in the Manufactory House, a two-story brick building on Tremont Street opposite the Granary Burying Ground. Boston's Society for Encouraging Industry and Employing the Poor had sponsored the construction of the manufactory in 1753-54 in a short- lived experiment to put idle women and children to work in the production of linen. The building, which first housed what historian J. E. Crowley has characterized as an early secularized attempt to deal with the social effects of idleness and luxury, later served as the first home of an institution dedicated to the promotion of an industrial and commercial economy. In 1792 the bank moved to the American Coffee House on State Street, which was the commercial and political center of the Commonwealth. There the bank stayed until 1809, when it moved into a new stone building by Bulfinch, also on State Street.41

The records of the directors of the Massachu- setts Bank give some sense of the issues in adapt- ing a building to banking purposes. The directors were actively involved in deciding a number of issues relating to the internal arrangements of the bank and security threats from fire, lightning, and robbery. Early in the process the directors agreed that Col. Thomas Dawes should supervise the repairs and building of the vault. Dawes, the leading master builder of Revolutionary Boston, was responsible for the design of the church in Brattle Square and, perhaps more to the point, was a shareholder in the bank by 1785 and was made a director in 1786. The directors agreed that the roof should be slated but delegated to

40 Domett, History of the Bank of New York, pp. 26-27; Allan Nevins, History of the Bank of New York and Trust Company, 1784 to I934 (New York: Privately printed, 1934), pp. 10, 17, 25.

41 Samuel Adams Drake, Old Landmarks and Historic Personages of Boston (Boston:J. R. Osgood, 1873), pp. 302-3; Gras, Massachu- setts First National Bank, p. 121, fig. opp. p. 232; Kirker, Architecture of Charles Bulfinch, p. 243; Crowley, This Sheba, Self, pp. 84-86.

15


the building committee decisions about "the size, the form, and the situation of the Desks and Counters Necessary to be used in the Bank." They also ordered an iron fence from Russia, which would be placed in the front of the bank, as called for in Dawes's plans. Other issues arose as the day of the opening neared. The directors agreed that "it will be useful to have a midling sized Bell at the Bank in case of Fire or an attempt to rob the Bank," approved an additional lightning rod for the roof, and discussed "which of the Officers should reside in the Bank with their Families, what parts of the house they should oc- cupy and what Rents they should pay." They also requested that Dawes "prepare a machine for hoisting up and lowering down the money into the vault." Renting quarters to bank officers not only produced income but also provided live-in security.42

The Bank of the United States also had to adapt a preexisting building for temporary hous- ing in Philadelphia. From September 1791 toJuly 1797, the bank carried on its business in rented quarters in Carpenters' Hall. Built to the designs of master builder Robert Smith between 1770 and 1774, the hall housed the Carpenters' Com- pany of Philadelphia on the first floor and the Li- brary Company of Philadelphia on the second floor from 1773 to 1790. Carpenters' Hall was a sensible location for the bank because it was just west of William Clark's Hall, which housed the Treasury Department throughout the 179os. The bank initially occupied the second floor-only recently vacated by the Library Company-but quickly expanded to take over the entire building.43

When the Bank of the United States was remodeled, the vaults and counters were the key changes. The hall was built on a squarish cruci- form plan, with the northern arm of the cross serving as the vestibule; by 1786 the rest of the first floor was one large room with a squat T shape. A small brick addition was built at the northeast corner, which held two vaults, one for cash and one for the books. Counters were most likely installed on the east and west sides of the room-near the two fireplaces-and probably on

42 Gras, Massachusetts First National Bank, pp. 230-31, 239- 42, 530, 538. On Thomas Dawes, see Frederic C. Detwiller, "Thomas Dawes: Boston's Patriot Architect," Old-Time New En- gland 68, nos. 1-2 (Summer-Fall 1977): 1-i8.

43 Peterson, "Carpenters' Hall," pp. 96-108.

the north side as well. Tellers would need to be nearest to the cash vault and would have occupied the east counter; cashiers would have occupied the west counter. The public entrance was not through the vestibule on the north but from the door on the south side. Thus the general public had direct access from the street into the Bank- ing Room but not to the vestibule, which led to the Directors' Room and to other offices on the second floor.44

The Bank of the United States

By 1794 the directors of the Bank of the United States had decided to remain in Philadelphia rather than move to the new District of Columbia. The bank was, after all, a private institution and under no obligation to move south with the federal government. Moreover, Philadelphia was still the financial capital of the country, although New York City was emerging as a powerful rival. In Feb- ruary 1794 the bank bought a lot on the west side of Third Street below Chestnut Street, just across Hudson's Alley from their current quarters, Car- penters' Hall, and a few yards south of the Trea- sury Department and the Bank of North America. A "Committee for Superintending the Building of the New Banking House" was appointed, and at some point in 1794 or 1795, Blodget was asked to draw up plans.45

Although there is no evidence that Blodget was close to either the president of the bank, Will- ing, or its leading director, Bingham, the directors obviously considered him to be an ideal can- didate. He was a gentleman, had plenty of time on his hands, and would not expect to be paid for the design. He was well traveled, had submitted a design for the U.S. Capitol, had spent a year in the District of Columbia as superintendent of public works, and was friends with designers such

44 The bank notice from the 1794 Philadelphia directory states that the bank was "in Chestmut between Third and Fourth Sts. on the South Side" (Peterson, "Carpenters' Hall," pp. 105- 7, fig. 6).

45James 0. Wettereau, "The Oldest Bank Building in the United States," in Eisenhart, Historic Philadelphia, pp. 71-72. Though some scholars have questioned Blodget's authorship of the bank, the documentation is strong. The Gazette of the United States, December 23, 1797, reprinted in Weekly Magazine (Philadel- phia) i, no. 3 (February 1798): 8-9, specified that the architect was an American and was from Massachusetts; Biddle stated that "the design was given by Samuel Blodget, of this city" (Biddle, Young Carpenter's Assistant, p. 35), and Blodget himself stated that he had designed the bank; see Economica, p. 165.


Fig. 7. William Birch, Bank of the United States, 1795-97. From William Birch, The City of Philadelphia (Philadelphia, 1800), pl. 17. (Winterthur Printed Book and Periodical Collection.)

as Thornton and Hoban. Blodget also had been involved in the founding of at least two banks- the Union Bank in Boston and the Bank of Co- lumbia in Georgetown-so he possessed unique knowledge of the operating procedures and spatial needs of financial institutions.

Blodget's design for the Bank of the United States called for a three-story building with a Co- rinthian portico marking the principal entrance on Third Street (fig. 7). Although the building appeared to be two stories from the front, a third floor was hidden behind the entablature and balustrade. The original plan was to have the entire

building done in local marble; however, the side and rear elevations were constructed of brick, probably to save money. Blodget disapproved of this change, noting ten years later that "its brick sides are an injurious deviation." Benjamin Henry Latrobe noted that "the White Marble Columns of the Bank are full of bluish and yellow- ish veins, but they have, notwithstanding, a very beautiful appearance." The low-hipped roof was covered with copper, which American build-

ers had begun to use only recently for public buildings.46

The portico and other stonework were executed by Irish-born Claudius LeGrand, whose stone yard was at the corner of Tenth and High (now Market) streets, on the northwest out- skirts of the city. LeGrand advertised on Novem- ber 30, 1797, that he and his sons had "just finished the marble colonnade, sculpture, carving, &c. of the portico of the new building of the Bank of the United States." In the tympanum of the portico was a carved eagle and arms, which an early guide to Philadelphia specified was "the American eagle." Latrobe, however, was not impressed with their workmanship: "Suffi- cient attention has not been paid to the succes- sive heights of the blocks, nor are the joints level.

46 Wettereau, "Oldest Bank Building," p. 72; Charles E. Pe- terson, "Notes on Copper Roofing in America to 1802," Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 24, no. 4 (December 1965): 313-18; Edward C. Carter II et al., eds., The Virginia Journal of Benjamin Henry Latrobe, I795-98, 3 vols. (New Haven: Yale Uni- versity Press for the Maryland Historical Society, 1977), 2:373.

17


Fig. 8. Samuel BlodgetJr., floor plan, Bank of the United States, Philadelphia, ca. 1795. Ink on paper. (John Davis papers, Maryland Historical Society.)

The plain workmanship is well executed. The

Sculpture is not good." Latrobe looked at the

building with the practiced eye of a professional architect and noted the gaps between the general ideas of the gentleman architect and the concrete realities of the building.47

The interior of the Bank of the United States was completely remodeled by James Windrim around 19o1. The original interior is known through surviving internal evidence in the structure, a handful of photographs, and a floor plan

47 Aurora (Philadelphia), November 30, 1797, quoted in Al- fred Coxe Prime, ed., The Arts and Crafts in Philadelphia, Maryland, and South Carolina, 786-800oo, Series Two (Topsfield, Mass.: Wal- pole Society, 1932), pp. 308-9; Carter, Virginia Journal, 2:373; LeGrand's address is in Cornelius William Stafford, The Philadel- phia Directory for 1797 (Philadelphia: William W. Woodward, 1797). LeGrand's advertisement was the only notice of the bank building in that paper. S. S. Moore and T. W.Jones, The Traveller's Directory, 2d ed. (Philadelphia: Mathew Carey, 1804), p. 13;James Mease, The Picture of Philadelphia (Philadelphia: B. and T. Kite, 1811), pp. 320-21. Mease specified that it was the American eagle.

in the collection of the Maryland Historical Soci-

ety (fig. 8). The principal entrance, on the east, led into a vestibule with double staircases; beyond this was the main Banking Room. In the two rear corners were windowless rooms that served as the day vaults for the books and for the cash. Access to these was through offices separated from the main hall by a low partition; these were most

likely for the cashier and the chief teller. A pan- eled counter is visible in one of the photographs of the room; if this is not the original counter, it would have followed similar lines. Elsewhere in the room was space for the discount clerks and

possibly the accountants.48

48John D. R. Platt, Penelope Hartshorne Batcheler, and Sarah M. Sweetser, "Historic Structure Report: First Bank of the United States," Historic Preservation Division, National Park Service, Denver, 1976; the photographs may be found in Josiah Granville Leach, The History of the Girard National Bank of Philadelphia, 183 2-

1902 (1902; reprint, New York: Greenwood Press, 1969). The floor plan is in the John Davis papers at the Maryland Historical Society. Davis (1770-1864) was born in England and came to

18


Fig. 9. Banking Room, Bank of the United States, Philadelphia, before 1901. From Josiah Gran- ville Leach, The History of the Girard National Bank of Philadelphia, I832-1902 (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1902).

The Banking Room was a sizeable space, roughly 45 by 94 feet, occupying virtually the entire first floor (fig. 9). It was considerably larger than its putative prototype, the Pay Hall at the Bank of England. Because of the projection of the vestibule, the Banking Room was U-shaped, a somewhat unusual configuration. The most dramatic features of the room were the two rows of Corinthian columns, which were fluted and cabled, and a barrel vault. This was not true vault-

ing: wood and plaster were used to create the im-

pression of a stone vault, which ran from the vestibule to the back door. As a result, the two lat- eral spaces were low-ceiled and more-or-less regular. The space was somewhat amorphous and

unspecialized. Its awkwardness is certainly due in

part to Blodget's lack of architectural training and experience; it is also due in part to his nature. Blodget was less interested in construction details or spatial arrangement than in the overall

Philadelphia in 1793. He worked for Latrobe ca. 1800-1802 and was involved with the waterworks in Philadelphia and Baltimore; see the autobiography in the Davis journals, vol. 2 (MS 186), Maryland Historical Society.

appearance of the building. George Washington once commented that Blodget "is certainly a

projecting Genius," suggesting that Blodget was full of visionary proposals but did not necessarily possess the skills to implement those plans. Blod-

get's ambitions for the Bank of the United States exceeded his ability to design.49

The only staircases on the floor plan were at the front door, where matching stairs ascended from both sides. The second floor was divided into two ranges, north and south of the barrel vault. Access between the north and south ranges of rooms was achieved through the front stair

landing and through a passage over the rear en-

try, which received light from a tripartite window on the west wall and opened into the barrel vault, allowing an additional source of light for the

Banking Room. There were three rooms in each

range: two larger rooms at the corners and a

49 George Washington to David Stuart, April 8, 1792 and No- vember 30, 1792, in John C. Fitzpatrick, ed., The Writings of George Washington from the Original Manuscript Sources, 1745-I799, 39 vols. (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1931-44), 32:18-19, 243-45.

19


Fig. 1o. Directors' Room, Bank of the United States, Philadelphia, before 19go. FromJosiah Gran- ville Leach, The History of the Girard National Bank of Philadelphia, i832-1902 (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1902).

small room in between. The three rooms were connected by broad double-folding doors, with ornate semicircular fanlights above.50

The design of the Banking Room's barrel vault most likely had its roots in the ancient Roman basilica plan. Basilicas were built for the administration of justice long before the plan was adopted for Christian churches. These structures had two rows of columns supporting a flat roof and narrow aisles between the columns and the walls. Such a plan was illustrated inAndreaPalladio'sFourBooks ofArchitec- ture, and Lord Burlington interpreted the form in the ballroom of the Assembly Rooms in York (1730). A relatively recent version that was bound to be on Blodget's mind was Sir Robert Taylor's set of four rooms (including the Transfer Office) created at the Bank of England in the late 176os. These rooms combined the basilica plan with Corinthian columns supporting a vaulted ceiling penetrated by skylights. The barrel vault of the Bank of the United

50 Platt, Batcheler, and Sweetser, "Historic Structure Report" is helpful in reconstructing the original arrangement of second- floor rooms.

States was a dramatic form in and of itself but was not entirely suited to the spatial needs of the bank. Because of its strong direction, the focal point of the room was not the counters or desks but the back door. Nevertheless, the Banking Room was a bold statement, virtually unprecedented in North America. Blodget's use of cabling in the flutes of the columns also relates to the Bank of England, where Taylor had used this detail in the Directors' Room and in the adjacent Garden Court.51

At the southeast corner of the second-story was the Directors' Room, where the directors voted on discounts (applications for loans) and set bank policy (fig. o). At the Bank of England that room was placed far from public scrutiny and

51 Andrea Palladio, The Four Books of Architecture, trans. Isaac Ware (1738; reprint, New York: Dover Publications, 1965), 3: pls. 17, 18;John Summerson, Architecture in Britain, 1530- 830 (Ham- mersworth, Eng.: Penguin, 1953), p. 338, figs. 278, 279. Johann Fischer von Ehrlach's imaginative reconstruction of the Temple of Zeus at Olympia in Entwurff einer historischen Architektur (1721) has been mentioned as a possible source; however, no copy of this work is known to have been in America in 1795, though Blodget could have seen it while traveling in Europe.

20


might only be glimpsed through the great window of the Pay Hall. By placing the Directors' Room of the Bank of the United States on the second floor, Blodget similarly limited the public's access but also allowed the room to be highly visible from the street (see fig. 7). At the same time, the directors had an excellent view of bustling Third Street. The room was dignified by an imposing two-part mantelpiece, not unlike one illustrated as plate 27 in the 1786 rule book of the Carpenters' Company of Philadelphia. This in turn was a composite of elements from British architect Abraham Swan's Designs for Chimney Pieces, first published in 1768. The mantelpiece was perhaps the most old-fashioned aspect of the building; it was conservative but not retardataire.52

The bank had a full basement that provided secure storage for specie, bank notes, bank records, and probably for the presses that printed bank notes and forms. Access from the Banking Room was through a narrow staircase near the rear door. The stairs, flanked by four smaller rooms, opened onto a transverse hall, which ran to exterior bulkhead doors with wrought-iron strap gates on the north and south sides. Another iron door separated this transverse passage from the bank vaults. The basement was fully vaulted with a combination of stone rubble and brick. (This was the only part of the interior built of ma- sonry.) The central bay had three groin vaults, and two barrel vaults ran from the central bay to both side walls. Each space in the basement had windows (on one of the side or rear walls) that were made secure by wrought-iron grillwork that was let into the stone lintels and sills. Access to the grounds of the bank-and thus to the door and windows into the basement-was limited by an iron fence. A pair of marble gateposts ornamented with neoclassical urns were on each side of the Third Street facade (see fig. 7). These gates allowed limited access to the rear yard for the de- livery and pickup of gold, silver, and bank notes, either directly into the Banking Room via the back door or into the basement vaults via the side entrances.53

52 Charles E. Peterson, ed., The Rules of Work of the Carpenters' Company of the City and County of Philadelphia, 786 (New York: Bell Publishing, 1971). The mantelpiece was moved to the southwest room, apparently at the time of the 1901 remodeling.

53 Platt, Batcheler, and Sweetser, "Historic Structure Report," p. 102. One set of iron gates was acquired by Henry Francis du Pont in 1948 and used as the entrance to Winterthur Museum; they are currently in storage; communication with Donald Fenni- more, senior curator of metals at Winterthur, September 19, 1999.

The most obvious precedent for the exterior of the Bank of the United States would seem to be the Bank of England. However, the Bank of England was larger than the American bank; its facade was also not monumental enough. Samp- son had developed his plan based on several smaller units rather than one huge block; this un- derstated approach was furthered by the fact that the entrance block contained only minor offices and essentially served to screen the Pay Hall, the heart of the bank's operations, from public view. The Bank of England was thus more sophisticated in having a sequence of monumental facades but was less useful as a prototype for its American counterpart.

The similarity between the exterior of the Bank of the United States and the Royal Ex- change (also called the Dublin Exchange) in Dublin (fig. 1 ) was first noted in print in 1811 by James Mease of Philadelphia. The overall form, portico, pilasters, and balustrade all recall the Dublin Exchange, which had been built between 1769 and 1779. Blodget may have seen the building during his European travels in 1784 or 1790 or he may have seen the engraving of the building in Views of the Most Remarkable Public Buildings, Monuments, and OtherEdifices in the City of Dublin by Robert Pool and John Cash, which was published in 1780. Blodget could have acquired a copy while abroad or may have borrowed the copy of his friend Hoban, who used the illus- tration of Leinster House in Dublin as one of the prototypes for the President's House in the Dis- trict of Columbia. Mease was a friend of Latrobe and much preferred Latrobe's Bank of Pennsylva- nia to Blodget's bank. Mease clearly saw the use of the Dublin Exchange as unfortunate.54

Although the Royal Exchange was in Dublin rather than in the great political and financial capital of London, it was not a provincial building. The designer, Thomas Cooley, had worked in London for Robert Mylne but also studied the works of Sir William Chambers, who blended tra- ditional English Palladianism with French neoclassicism. Sir John Summerson has noted that the exchange showed something "rather more of

54 Mease, Picture of Philadelphia, pp. 320-21. Latrobe wrote to William Lee on March 22, 1817, that the President's House was "acknowledged to be that of the palace of the Duke of Leinster, which I have now before me, in a book containing the principal edifices of Dublin" (John C. Van Home et al., eds., Correspondence and Miscellaneous Papers of Benjamin Henry Latrobe, 3 vols. [New Ha- ven: Yale University Press, 1984-88], 3:872); see also William Seale, The President's House, 2 vols. (Washington, D.C.: White House Historical Assoc., 1986), 1:44-46.

21


Fig. 11. Robert Pool and John Cash, The North Front of the Royal Exchange, 1769-79. From Robert Pool and John Cash, Views of the Most Remarkable Public Buildings, Monuments, and Other Edifices in the City of Dublin (Dublin: J. Williams, 1780), p. 43. (Winterthur Printed Book and Periodical Collection.)

the French Neo-classic spirit than most of Cham- bers's executed or published works" not simply in the paired columns of the portico but in the

giant pilasters and windowless rusticated walling of the ground floor. Indeed, Cooley may have been familiar with the church of Sainte-Gene- vieve in Paris, designed byJ. G. Soufflot around

1755-56 but not completed until 1789 (fig. 12).55

Blodget was not alone in his admiration for the school of Chambers. In the United States, such interest seems to have been strongest in New

England. The Massachusetts State House, de-

signed by Blodget's friend Bulfinch and built in the same years as the Bank of the United States, showed the influence of Chambers's new Somer- set House in London. And Asher Benjamin, whose American Builder's Companion disseminated

55 Summerson, Architecture in Britain, p. 45. After the French Revolution, St. Genevieve became known as the Pantheon.

the neoclassical gospel to carpenters and builders across the eastern United States, used the expla- nation of the orders and their various parts from Chambers's "incomparable" Treatise on Civil Ar- chitecture for his own second edition, published in i811.56

Blodget's design for the bank differed from that of the Royal Exchange in three principal ways: the ground floor was not windowless, there was no dome, and there were rectangular panels between the first and second floors. Only those

panels on the three central bays have sculpture; the outer ones are blank. The central panel con- tains a complex allegory with books, a beehive, a cherub figure-perhaps Mercury-a globe, and a bag of money. Blodget could have seen similar

56 Kirker, Architecture of Charles Bulfinch, pp. 10 1-14; Asher Benjamin, The American Builder's Companion (Boston: R. P. and C. Williams, 1816), preface. William Chambers, Treatise on Civil Ar- chitecture (London, 1791).

22

I-


Fig. 12. Charpentier, Vui Giometrale du Portail de la Nouvelle Eglise de Ste. Genevieve Patrone de Paris, 1757. Engraving. (ThomasJefferson Memorial Foundation, courtesy of the family of Page Taylor Kirk.)

panels (of a more religious subject matter) on the

porticoes of two recent Paris churches, Saint Sul-

pice and Sainte-Genevieve. Flanking the central

panel were panels that displayed draped swags, soon to become a popular neoclassical motif and one that Blodget may have seen on Sainte-Gene- vieve. Blodget claimed that he drew the proportions and detailing of the bank's columns directly from classical antiquity. The description of the bank in the Gazette of the United States, the leading Federalist newspaper in Philadelphia, did not mention the Royal Exchange. Rather, it praised the building as "a truly Grecian edifice"-by which was meant "truly classical"-and further stated that the portico showed "proportions nearly corresponding to the front of the cele- brated Roman temple at Nismes," and that the six Corinthian columns were ornamented as "at

Palmyra and Rome when architecture was at its Zenith in the Augustan age." Blodget could have found numerous plates of the Maison Carr6e and other Roman temples in Palladio's Four Books of Architecture (fig. 13). Robert Wood's Ruins of Pal-

myra (1753) and Ruins of Baalbec (1757) contained illustrations of the architectural remains of these ancient Roman outposts recorded by Wood and James Dawkins during an expedition in

1750-51. All of these books could be found at the Library Company of Philadelphia in their new

building designed by William Thornton. The Mai- son Carree in Nimes, the buildings at Palmyra in

Syria, and those at Baalbec in Lebanon all used a

highly ornamented version of the Corinthian order, with numerous volutes above the acanthus leaves on the capitals. The classical remains of Baalbec had been influential in French neoclassi-

23


Fig. 13. Elevation, Maison Carr6e, Nimes, France, ca. 5 A.D. From Andrea Palladio, The Four Books of Architec- ture by Andrea Palladio (London: Isaac Ware, 1738), pl. 82. (Winterthur Printed Book and Periodical Collec- tion.)

cal architecture; the Corinthian columns of the church of Sainte-Genevieve in Paris were based on those from Baalbec.57

The Maison Carree had played an important role in Blodget's architectural thinking in the

preceding years: both of his proposals for the Capitol incorporated elements from this important Roman temple. His first study, produced about June 1792, was for a pure temple form of the Corinthian order based directly on the Mai- son Carree. He was well aware that Jefferson con-

57 Gazette of the United States, December 23, 1797; A Catalogue of Books Belonging to the Library Company of Philadelphia (Philadel- phia: By the library, 1789). On Baalbec as a source for Sainte- Genevieve, see Robert L. Alexander, The Architecture of Maximilian Godefroy (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974), p. 12.

Fig. 14. Thomas Jefferson, plan for the U.S. Capitol, after a plan by Samuel BlodgetJr., 1792. Ink on paper. (Massachusetts Historical Society.)

sidered Maison Carree to be "one of the models of antiquity which have had the approbation of thousands of years." Indeed, Jefferson had used the temple as the starting point for his own de-

sign for the Virginia State Capitol, and he encour-

aged Frenchman Stephen Hallet to develop a

temple form in his proposal for the U.S. Capitol. But it must have become quickly apparent that a

temple form would not be large enough to accommodate the various spaces needed for the United States Congress.58

The next month Blodget produced a second scheme, known only from a brief written description, for a building with four porticoes and a central dome. This description could be interpreted as a square block with porticoes on all four sides, in the manner of Palladio's Villa Rotunda, a well- known favorite of Jefferson's. It seems more

likely, though, that it was a cross-shaped building with the dome over the central crossing. A drawing in Jefferson's hand, now at the Massachusetts Historical Society, which Fiske Kimball concluded was a study for the Capitol, may well be a quick sketch of Blodgett's plan (fig. 14). It recalled Sainte-Genevieve in Paris, which featured a grand portico and a dome. The cross shape of the plan allowed for four major spaces: a grand vestibule, halls for the Senate and the House of Representa- tives, and a conference room. Blodget wrote to Jefferson that he would use the Corinthian order of the Maison Carree for the columns that would

support the dome. Blodget's design for the Bank

58 Blodget to Jefferson, June 25, 1792, and July o1, 1792, in Boyd, Papers of Thomas Jefferson, 24:119-29, 205-6; Jefferson to Pierre Charles L'Enfant, April 1o, 1791, in Boyd, Papers of Thomas Jefferson, 20:86.

24


of the United States may well have evolved out of his earlier plan for the Capitol.59

The neoclassicism of the Bank of the United States is evident in its portico, but for Blodget the bank's aesthetic appeal was not based on possible associations between the United States and the ancient Roman republic. A brief article in the Ga- zette of the United States analyzed the building's effect with a specificity that suggests the writer had talked directly to Blodget. "On viewing this building, the first impression is, one plain and beauti- fully proportioned whole. On a more nice inspec- tion, the eye searching for decoration is richly gratified, finds everything in its proper size and in its proper place, splendid with neatness, nothing deficient, but nothing crowded, sufficiently striking but not abruptly obtrusive, combining to form an elegant exhibition of simple grandeur and chaste magnificence." This critique of the bank was in the mainstream of Enlightenment aesthetic thought. British philosophers such as Francis Hutcheson and Henry Home (also known as Lord Kames) argued that all people were born with an aesthetic faculty (separate from the rational faculty) that was responsible for our ideas of beauty and were stimulated whenever we per- ceive the quality of "uniformity amidst variety" in the external world. Uniformity was generally achieved through order, symmetry, and good proportion, while variety was achieved by breaking up the design into smaller units and by the use of ornament. Also likely to stimulate ideas of beauty in the mind were buildings that were decent or neat-situated between plainness and over- ornamentation.6

Blodget could find a clear explication of the relationship of plainness, neatness, and elegance in the Library Company's copy of Hugh Blair's Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres and in Lord

59Blodget to Jefferson, July o, 1792, in Boyd, Papers of Thomas Jefferson, 24:205-6; Fiske Kimball, Thomas Jefferson, Archi- tect (Cambridge: Riverside Press, 1916), pp. 55, 157-58, pl. 132. Kimball attributed this to Hallet, based on the similarity between Sainte-Genevieve and the central section of Hallet's "Second Fancy Piece." However, many Americans saw the building rising in Paris in the 1780s, includingJefferson andJohn Trumbull; see Howard C. Rice, ThomasJefferson's Paris (Princeton: Princeton Uni- versity Press, 1976), fig. 12; Theodore Sizer, ed., TheAutobiography of ColonelJohn Trumbull: Patriot-Artist, i756-I843 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1953), p. 104; William Howard Adams, ed., Jefferson and the Arts: An Extended View (Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 1976), p. 188.

60 Gazette of the United States, December 23, 1797; on neatness as an aesthetic concept, see Sweeney, "High-Style Vernacular," pp. 56-57; Kenneth Hafertepe, "An Inquiry into ThomasJeffer- son's Ideas of Beauty," Journal of the Society of Architectural Histori- ans 59, no. 2 (June 2000): 216-31.

Kames's Elements of Criticism, which was also a favorite text ofJefferson. Blodget later quoted "the learned and philosophical Lord Kaimes" several times in Economica and also cited Jefferson's Notes on the State of Virginia. Certainly in his reading of Notes Blodget pondered Jefferson's criticism of the buildings of Williamsburg as "rude, mis- shapen piles" and his plea for an architecture of "symmetry and taste" devoid of "the burthen of barbarous ornaments." The Gazette suggested that the bank was well proportioned but also that it derived a certain grandeur, even magnificence, from its rich array of ornament. To the degree that the building spoke about republican virtue, it was not through mental associations with the buildings of the ancient Roman republic-Blod- get's sources, after all, were buildings of the impe- rial era-but because a neat and plain style was not luxurious and thus not likely to undermine the virtue of the citizenry.61

The Gazette article made this thought explicit through praise for the bank as evidence of Ameri- ca's emerging attention to the arts and sciences and through a contrast to luxurious and warlike Europe. "It may now be justly affirmed, that agricultural and commercial pursuits are not the sole objects of America's attentions; but that arts and sciences have already raised their heads, with all the symptoms of beauty, health, and vigor, that promise a strong a rich maturity." The report drew a sharp contrast between "the full-grown empires of Europe," which were "wasting their vigor in enervating luxuries, and exhausting each other's strength in relentless wars," and "the western world, where enlightened freedom, hon- est independence, and smiling peace" prevailed. At first glance it seems paradoxical that the writer could praise a building clearly based on ancient and modern European building and then con- demn European culture as devastated by luxury and by war, but Blodget saw America as a new and improved version of Europe, indeed, a neater and plainer version.62

Other reviews were almost uniformly favor- able. As the building neared completion in July 1797, Claypoole's Advertiser noted that the bank "may safely be pronounced the master-piece of Philadelphia, for beauty and grandeur of architecture. The front is covered entirely with elegant

61 Blodget, Economica, pp. 1, 9, 16; ThomasJefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, ed. William Peden (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1954), pp. 152-53.

62 Gazette of the United States, December 23, 1797.

25


Fig. 15. Elevation, Bank of the United States, Philadelphia, 1795-97. From Owen Biddle, The Young Carpenter's Assistant; or, A System of Architecture Adapted to the Style of Building of the United States (Philadelphia: Benjamin John- son, 1805), pl. 43. (Winterthur Printed Book and Periodical Collection.)

polished marble, decorated with superb speci- mens of sculpture, and a great piazza is finishing, the top of which is supported by marble pillars of immense size and height." Geographer and lexi-

cographer Noah Webster, in describing the public edifices of Philadelphia, wrote that "the new edifice of the Bank of the United States is a most elegant structure, ornamented in front with marble columns." Philadelphia carpenter and builder Owen Biddle, in The Young Carpenter's As- sistant, included a plate of the bank (fig. 15) and wrote that "this superb Building is an elegant specimen of the Corinthian Order; the proportions taken from a Roman temple, called the Mai- son Quarree, at Nismes, in the south of France." In 181 James Mease noted -that the Bank of the United States was the first public building erected in Philadelphia to have a portico and pillars. In-

deed, monumental marble porticoes were still fairly rare in the United States. Mease also was the

only critic to note that the outer pairs of columns were coupled and, as has been noted, to link the design to that of the Royal Exchange in Dublin. Most reviewers were impressed by the building's elaborate colonnade and other ornamental features, apparently not bothered by any possible corrupting influences they might contain.63

The only critical voice was that of Latrobe, and his criticism was somewhat muted. In his oration before the Society of Artists in 181 i, Latrobe dis-

63 Claypoole's Advertiser, July 25, 1797, quoted in Wettereau, "Oldest Bank Building," p. 73; Noah Webster, Elements of Useful Knowledge, Volume II:. Containing a Historical and Geographical Ac- count of the United States, for the Use of Schools, 2d ed. (New Haven, Conn.: Sidney's Press, 1808), p. 147; Biddle, Young Carpenter's As- sistant, p. 35; Mease, Picture of Philadelphia, pp. 320-21.

26


Fig. 16. Benjamin Henry Latrobe, Bank of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, ca. 1798. Watercolor. (Maryland Historical Society.)

cussed the tendency of Philadelphians to copy "the palaces of the corrupt age of Diocletian"- as had William Hamilton at the Woodlands-"or the still more absurd and debased taste of Louis the XIV"-as had Robert Morris in hiring Pierre Charles L'Enfant to design his town house- rather than "exhibiting in our public edifices that

republican simplicity which we profess." He noted that beautiful marble was available from

quarries near Philadelphia and that the first

building to take advantage of this had been the Bank of the United States. "Although only a copy of a European building of indifferent taste, and

very defective in its execution, it is still a bold

proof of the spirit of the citizens who erected it, and the tendency of the community to force, rather than to retard, the advancement of the arts." While comparing the bank to the Royal Ex-

change, Latrobe commented on the bank's

roughly joined stonework of the portico and the main facade. Yet he probably felt that he could not criticize the building's classical elements too

harshly without implicating his own buildings in the minds of his listeners.64

64 Benjamin Henry Latrobe, Anniversary Oration, Pronounced be-

fore the Society of Artists of the United States, by Appointment of the Soci- ety, on the Eighth of May, I8ii (Philadelphia: Bradford and In- skeep, 1811), pp. 27-28. Five years after this oration, Latrobe commented that the Bank of the United States was "in every possible respect a miserable building" (Benjamin Henry Latrobe to Samuel Hazelhurst, September 5, 1816, in Hamlin, Benjamin Henry Latrobe, p. 499).

Latrobe's Banking Houses

Benjamin Henry Latrobe was responsible for two of the most important banking houses of the period. Among the state-chartered banks, none made a greater architectural statement than the Bank of Pennsylvania. The bank was originally quartered in the Free Mason's Lodge, which had been built in 1755 on Lodge Street just west of Second Street. After the Bank of the United States moved into its new quarters, the Bank of

Pennsylvania moved into Carpenters' Hall in Au-

gust 1798. At this point, however, the bank had

already acquired a site on Second Street just north of City Tavern. The bank's president, Sam- uel M. Fox, had met Latrobe, who visited Phila-

delphia in the spring of 1798 and made a quick sketch for a proposed building. He later submitted an exquisite watercolor (fig. 16). Fox quickly approved Latrobe's proposal, which induced the architect to move from Richmond to Philadel-

phia in December of that year.65 The watercolor shows the building, serene

and classical, in its Second Street context with the

City Tavern in the background. Morning light rakes across the main facade, and the entire north flank of the building is visible. Porticoes of six columns grace both the east and west facades, and a low, saucer dome of Roman inspiration

65 Peterson, "Carpenters' Hall," pp. 107-8.

27

Winterthur Portfolio 35:r

rises from the middle of the building. Latrobe made great aesthetic use of the plain wall, subtly articulating the Banking Room and subsidiary spaces by slight projections in the wall surface. The windowless principal facade gives it the air of an impregnable fortress or treasury. The bank was built of local marble, the same material used for the Bank of the United States. Where Blodget was forced to use brick for the side and rear elevations, Latrobe was able to use marble throughout. Interestingly, Latrobe's watercolor of the bank de- emphasized the blue cast of the marble, depicting it instead as creamy beige with gold highlights. A presentation of such aesthetic quality was virtually unknown in America, and it seems to have been a tremendous sales tool for the architect.66

Latrobe's Ionic columns were a simplified version of those on the Temple of Minerva Polias, one of the porticoes of the Erechtheum in Ath- ens. The columns were left unfluted, and the necking just beneath the volutes had a simple egg-and-dart molding rather than an elaborate anthemion motif. Latrobe's architectural books had been captured by the French while he was in transit from Britain, and he claimed to have designed the columns from memory. It should be noted, however, that a copy of Stuart and Revett's Antiquities of Athens, which illustrated this column, was only three blocks away at the Library Com- pany of Philadelphia. Blodget's columns from the Maison Carr6e were one of the earliest uses of a Roman order in America, but such usage had been popular in Europe for several decades; La- trobe's use of a Greek order was closer to the Brit- ish avant-garde. Indeed, such Greek forms would not find many American imitators for nearly twenty years.67

Soon after moving into Carpenters' Hall, the Bank of Pennsylvania was burglarized, an event that would affect the design of their new building. On the morning of September 2, 1798, the back door to Carpenters' Hall was found open, along with the inner and outer doors to the cash vault. More than $160,000 in bank notes and gold was taken. Bank president Fox and cashier Jonathan

66 On Latrobe's drawing, see Jeffrey A. Cohen's catalogue entry in James F. O'Gorman et al., Drawing toward Building: Philadel- phia Architectural Graphics, 73 2- 986 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press for the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 1986), pp. 46-48.

67 Biddle noted that the Ionic order was "taken from an ancient Greek Temple" (Biddle, Young Carpenter's Assistant, p. 54); however, Moore and Jones (Traveller's Directory, p. 14) and Mease (Picture of Philadelphia, p. 321) specified the Temple of Minerva Polias.

Smith immediately suspected that local black- smith Patrick Lyon, who had installed the iron doors on the vault, had made duplicate keys; they had him thrown into Walnut Street Prison. Lyon, for his part, was extremely critical of the bank's standards for security. The back door "had no lock at all but [was] just barred like a barn door instead of a banking house." Moreover, the bank had ordered Lyon to install patent locks made by Mr. Ives of Fleet Street in London, but this, Lyon insisted, was "the most insignificant patent that was ever granted by his majesty King George the third of Great Britain." These locks were clumsily made, Lyon charged, and anyone could have eas- ily made copies of the keys.68

In November a young carpenter named Isaac Davis aroused suspicion by depositing first $16,000 and then $3,910 in the Bank of Pennsyl- vania. When bank officials checked with the Bank of the United States and the Bank of North America and found that Davis had also made substantial deposits there, he was confronted and soon confessed to the crime. Davis's accomplice was Cunningham, the bank porter, who sometimes slept inside the building. Most of the stolen money was recovered. In announcing Davis's cap- ture, the November 20 issue of the Gazette of the United States crowed that Davis was "a carpenter, and a noted democrat." In the heated political environment of the John Adams administration, Federalists were all too willing to believe that all Jeffersonian democrats were potential criminals.69

Although the true perpetrators had been found, Lyon remained in prison until December 14. He subsequently issued a book detailing his unlawful detainment and retained a leading Phil- adelphia lawyer, Joseph Hopkinson, to file suit against Fox and the bank. The jury returned a verdict of $12,000 damages, although Lyon set- tled for $9,ooo. Thirty years later John Neagle painted a portrait of Lyon at his forge, with a de- fiant expression on his face and the cupola of Walnut Street Prison plainly evident in the background. In his book Lyon never provided an ex- planation of why the bank authorities refused to allow him to go free even after the true culprits were arrested.

The changes made in the design of the new

68 Patrick Lyon, The Narrative of Patrick Lyon, Who Suffered Three Months Severe Imprisonment in Philadelphia Gaol; on Merely a Vague Suspicion of Being Concerned in the Robbery of the Bank of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia: Francis and Robert Bailey, 1799), pp. 7-9, 6o-6i.

69 Lyon, Narrative of Patrick Lyon, pp. 46, 62.

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Fig. 17. William Birch, Bank of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, ca. 800. From William Birch, The City of Philadelphia (Philadelphia, 1800), pl. 34. (Winterthur Printed Book and Periodical Collection.)

banking house in the aftermath of the robbery were dramatic (fig. 17). The bank was surrounded with a cast-iron fence, or palisade, and domed pavilions were erected at each of the four corners of the property; three were watch houses and one was an outhouse. The watch houses were

square structures; the two outer walls presented blind arches to the street; the two inner walls had a door and a window. Each pavilion was heated

by a fireplace; the chimney was at the top of the dome. The rear of the lot was laid out with grass, trees, ornamental shrubs, and gravel walks.70

Other changes compromised the bank's dramatic neoclassical austerity and simplicity. La-

70 Cohen and Brownell date the watercolor to December 1798, but I suspect that it was prepared prior to the robbery. The iron fence and guardhouses, absent from the watercolor, are prominent in Birch's print, which shows the original fenestration scheme for the side elevation and not the one that was built. Given that the walls had reached the top of the first floor by Sep- ember 1799, the Birch print must date from 1799 rather than 1800 or 1801. See Cohen and Brownell, Architectural Drawings of Benjamin Henry Latrobe, 1:189; Carter, Journals of Benjamin Henry Latrobe, 3:9.

trobe's 1798 plan made a two-story building look like one story by lighting the upstairs rooms at each end of the building with round-arched windows that seemed to be part of the tripartite windows below. In the revisions, Latrobe increased the height of the walls; added windows for the basement spaces; converted the first-floor tripartite windows into standard six-over-six windows set within a recessed arch; and created separate (and higher) windows at the level of the recessed

panel over the Banking Room window. The un-

usually shaped second-floor windows had fourteen panes in two rows of seven (the same width as the Banking Room windows) that were fixed in

place. The unity of the original fenestration was thus lost; the Directors' Room and Stockholders' Room had smaller windows along with the vaults. Latrobe was also forced to add a skylight to the west end of the building to light the Directors' Room. The increased height of the walls also increased the height of the columns but not their width, giving them attenuated proportions more characteristic of Roman than Greek columns.

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Winterthur Portfolio 35:I 30

Fig. 18. Elevation, Bank of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, 1798-1800. From Owen Biddle, The Young Carpenter's Assistant; or, A System of Architecture Adapted to the Style of Building in the United States (Philadelphia: Benjamin Johnson, 1805), pl. 42. (Winterthur Printed Book and Periodical Collection.)

And the elegant saucer dome gave way to a

stepped dome with a very large lantern (fig. 18). One entered the bank from Second Street

(fig. 19). A narrow passage gave access to the President's Office on the left, the Banking Hall ahead, and the Printing Office on the right (via stairs). The Banking Hall was the hub of circula- tion in the plan: it had six doors. Semicircular niches on the southeast and northeast led to passages to the President's Office and the day vaults for cash and for books-the latter, which was lit by a northern window, may have doubled as the Cashier's Office, though it lacked a fireplace. A

spiral staircase rose from the day vaults to larger night vaults above; additional vaults were in the basement. The western door of the Banking Hall led into the Stockholders' Room, while semicircular niches on the southwest and northwest opened into the clerks' offices and the Directors' Room. Latrobe's bank contained a brilliant variety of spaces-all vaulted in stone-with unusual

Fig. 19. Benjamin Henry Latrobe, floor plan, Bank of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, 1798-1800. Ink on paper. (Historical Society of Pennsylvania.)


Fig. 20. Benjamin Henry Latrobe, section plan, Bank of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, 1798-1800. Ink on paper. (Historical Society of Pennsylvania.)

lighting effects (fig. 20). The Banking Hall was a circular space, with large round-arched windows on the north and south walls and a coffered dome with skylight above. The President's Room, at the southeast corner, was rectangular with a groined vault in the central bay. The Stockholders' Room had groined vaulting in the center and semicircular. end walls. There were also six-over-six windows on the north and south walls and flanking the door on the west side as well as a segmental window over the door. The Directors' Room upstairs was square in shape and smaller than the Stockholders' Room below but also had a groined vault with a small skylight in its center.

Latrobe paid a great deal of attention to the

heating of the Banking Hall. On the north and south walls were fireplaces with cast-iron chimneypieces, and in the center of the room was a cast-iron stove in the form of an ornamental altar. The fireplaces were quite striking in that there were large windows immediately above them; the flues ran along the side of the window. Such an arrangement was virtually unprecedented in America, though not in Europe. The cast-iron stove received its heat from a wood-burning fur- nace in the basement. Its placement in the center of the Banking Room suggests Latrobe's familiar-

ity with the Pay Hall in the Bank of England (see fig. 2).71

Latrobe continued the tradition of reserving a

71 Cohen and Brownell, Architectural Drawings of Benjamin Henry Latrobe, 1:196, 214. The cast-iron stove was byJohn W. God- frey, the chimneypieces by Henry Foxall.

very private space for the Directors' Room, placing it at the west end of the second floor, away from Second Street. In fact, their room was so re- mote that the directors had to pass through a clerk's office to get to their meeting room. The Bank of Pennsylvania was the only banking house to have a Stockholders' Room on the first floor in addition to a Directors' Room.

A few years after completing the bank, La- trobe overheard a comment that he considered "the highest encomium, and the most flattering I ever received." Louis August Felix, baron de

Beaujour, came to America in 1805 as French commissioner of commercial relations; he had earlier served as French consul to Greece. La- trobe observed Felix and a companion standing in silence across Second Street from the bank. The architect ducked into a doorway and observed them. After several minutes Felix ex- claimed several times, "Si beau! et si simple!" La- trobe would have been especially pleased with the Frenchman's association of beauty with simplicity. A decade after the completion of the build-

ing, Latrobe told the Society of Artists that his in- tention had been "to produce a pure specimen of Grecian simplicity in design, and Grecian per- manence in execution."72

Latrobe saw the Bank of Pennsylvania in stark contrast to the Bank of the United States; others did not. Biddle published the main elevation of

72 Carter, Journals of Benjamin Henry Latrobe, 3:49-50; Latrobe, Anniversary Oration, p. 28.

31


Latrobe's bank (see fig. 18) alongside that of the Bank of the United States and noted that "this beautiful building was entirely of Marble"-a subtle contrast to the brick sides of the latter- and characterized it as "a neat specimen of the Ionic order, taken from an ancient Greek Temple." In the next plate he also referred to Blodget's bank as a "superb building" and "an elegant specimen of the Corinthian order." Simi- larly, Webster called Latrobe's bank "elegant" but Blodget's bank "most elegant."73

Two other commentators gave a decisive pref- erence to the Bank of Pennsylvania with descrip- tions so detailed that they must have been based on conversations with the architect or the client. The Traveller's Directory enthused that "the elegant simplicity of the whole design is such that, whilst no expence has been spared to render it secure and convenient, little has been incurred in mere ornament." And James Mease called it "a truly noble structure, the exterior of which universally strikes the beholder with an idea of chaste simplicity and grandeur, not seen in any building in the United States; and according to the declaration of all foreigners of taste, is not surpassed by any in Europe." Here Mease used a classic formu- lation of Enlightenment aesthetic philosophy, in which the exterior of a building raises in the mind ideas of beauty and grandeur. Such ideas were sensed directly and without the aid of the rational faculty; because all people were created with a sense of beauty, taste was universal around the world and throughout history. In the political context the achievement of grandeur through chaste simplicity was culturally desirable because it paralleled the "republican simplicity" of Amer- ican institutions.74

Perhaps commentators such as Webster and Biddle were struck by the elaboration of the Co- rinthian order on the Bank of the United States or perhaps by the contrast in size. The Bank of the United States was 94 feet across and 72 feet deep, excluding the portico, while the Bank of Pennsylvania was 51 feet broad and 125 feet deep, although the porticoes took up a good 20 feet of the depth. The Bank of the United States

73 Biddle, Young Carpenter's Assistant, p. 35; Webster, Elements of Useful Knowledge, p. 147.

74 Moore andJones, Traveller's Directory; Mease, Picture of Phila- delphia, pp. 321-22. Mease was a 1787 graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and attended the university's medical college, where one of his professors was Benjamin Rush, who incorporated Enlightenment theories of innate sense of beauty and mo- rality into his lectures. Mease dedicated his thesis to Rush.

also had an additional story, though its barrel vault took up more than one-third of the second floor. But what Latrobe's bank lacked in size, it made up for in cost. The Bank of the United States cost something in the neighborhood of $110,000 to build, not including the cashier's dwelling or other real estate holdings in Philadel- phia. The branch banks in Charleston and New York City cost $110,000 and $100,000 respec- tively, but this was the total of all real estate and improvements thereon. Boston was quite frugal by comparison, spending only $58,000 on its bank. In January of 1802 Samuel M. Fox, president of the Bank of Pennsylvania, reported that the cost of the lot, building, watch houses, and paving in the alley amounted to more than $216,000 and that another $12,000 would be needed to complete the building. The porticoes alone cost $58,ooo. Republican simplicity, it seems, did not come cheap.75

Perhaps because of their cost and size, the Bank of the United States and the Bank of Penn- sylvania at the time had a limited impact on the exteriors of other banking houses. No others used the elaborate Roman Corinthian order of Blodget's bank or the Greek Ionic of Latrobe's, although some details of one bank or the other were occasionally quoted. As we shall see, the sig- nificance of these two buildings was to be found more in their interior arrangements, though this too was limited.

Latrobe's other major banking house of the period, the Bank of Philadelphia, was the only example of this building type to deviate from the classical tradition, reviving instead the Gothic style (fig. 21). The bank opened in 1803 in a rented house on Chestnut Street opposite the Bank of North America. In 1806 a building site on Fourth Street just south of Chestnut was acquired. The directors retained Latrobe, who had already designed a seal for the bank. Like the Bank of Pennsylvania (and the Bank of the United States), the Bank of Philadelphia, completed in 1808, faced east. Latrobe's design was for a broad and squarish building, proportions more typical for a classical rather than a Gothic structure. At 43 feet wide by 60 feet deep, the Bank of Philadelphia was much smaller than La- trobe's earlier bank (even though the porticoes of that bank accounted for a considerable part of

75 Wettereau, "Oldest Bank Building," p. 73; Cohen and Brownell, Architectural Drawings of Benjamin Henry Latrobe, 1:190, 220.

32


Fig. 21. Bank of Philadelphia, 1808. From W. R. and T. Birch, The City of Philadelphia, 3d ed. (Philadelphia, 1809), pl. 42. (Historical Society of Pennsylvania.)

its depth). The fanlight over the door and the central window on the other elevations displayed pointed, Gothic arches; other, smaller windows were square-headed and had Gothic-inspired drip moldings. Above the battlement of the main block was a smaller structure with a rose window in the center, buttresses, several windows with

pointed arches, and nine chimneys. Latrobe en- couraged the directors to build with Chester stone, but the final decision was in favor of brick with marble front steps and a stone foundation. The grounds on the other three sides were, like the Bank of Pennsylvania, laid out with trees and

shrubbery. On both sides of the building, gravel paths led to octagonal lodges for the watchmen; these structures were also given crenellation and Gothic windows.76

76 Latrobe had already designed a house for William Cram- mond of Philadelphia in the Gothic style, one of the earliest such examples in America. Nicholas B. Wainwright, History of the Phila- delphia National Bank: A Century and a Half of Philadelphia Banking, I803-I953 (Philadelphia: By the bank, 1953), pp. 5-8. Hamlin, Benjamin Henry Latrobe, pp. 344-47; Cohen and Brownell, Architec- tural Drawings of Benjamin Henry Latrobe, 1:1 85.

Latrobe's work for the Bank of Pennsylvania gave him a special knowledge of the functional needs of a banking house. In a letter to the president of the Bank of Philadelphia, George Clymer, he outlined his ideas about internal arrangements. The first teller needed to be near the vaults and the Cashier's Office and have direct access to the scales. The second teller, "to whom the money for payment of notes is paid," re-

quired a strong light to examine and detect for-

geries" and also proximity to the note clerk. Both tellers needed access to the bookkeepers. Finally, the discount clerk, who received and processed applications for loans, did not need to be near the vaults and was thus placed by the entrance.77

The offices of the president and the cashier flanked the entry and were accessible both from the Banking Room and from the porch. The

placement of the President's Office at the southeast corner echoed the arrangements of the Bank

77 Benjamin Henry Latrobe to George Clymer, June 18, 1808, in Van Home, Correspondence and Miscellaneous Papers of Benjamin Henry Latrobe, 2:634-35.

33


of Pennsylvania; however, the cashier was given an analogous space-not anticipated in Latrobe's earlier bank-and thus was acknowledged as being in charge of the day-to-day affairs of the bank. The central door of the recessed porch led directly into the Banking Room. This was a cross- shaped room lit by pointed arched windows over the north, west, and south walls, and a round- arched window over the main door. Immediately inside the door were desks for the note clerk (to the left) and the discount clerk (to the right).Just beyond these were counters that ran east-west for the first teller (to the north) and the second teller (to the south). The second teller, who needed strong light, was placed near the south window. And against the west window were the desks of the bookkeepers, who were thus equidistant from the first and second tellers. The day vaults were presumably at the northwest corner near the first teller, and the staircase was in the southwest corner. The principal stylistic treatment of the space was the ceiling, which was 20 feet high and plas- tered in imitation of stone vaulting. Plaster ribs rose from the corners and arched toward the center, where a large pendant was hung. The pendant, too, was of plaster, with an iron frame- work, which Latrobe likened to a birdcage. The doorways to the president and cashier's offices, to the money vaults, and to the stairs were term- inated with the head of a dog-which, Mease explained, was an emblem of fidelity-resting upon a pile of dollars, which the dog was thus guarding.78

The marble stairs led to the smaller part of the structure, which rode atop the main block. The principal space here was the Directors' Room, which Latrobe called the Boardroom. This space was in the center of the floor, which allowed light from large Gothic windows on the north and south walls. Latrobe described it in a letter to his brother as "a Gothic octagon Chapter House with one pillar in the center." A chapter house was "the place of assembly for the dean and can- ons in a cathedral ... for the transaction of business." At each corner of the space was a column engaged to the wall, but the drama came from the central column of clouded marble, which carried the vaulted ceiling. Mease noted that the ceiling was "enriched with mouldings and decorated at their intersections with rosets, and a head repre-

7" Hamlin, Benjamin Henry Latrobe, pp. 345-46; Mease, Picture of Philadelphia, pp. 321-22.

senting Philadelphia." To the west of the Direc- tors' Room was the Library and the Engraver's Room. The work of the engraver was also carried on in the basement, which contained the Printing Office as well as storage spaces for fuel and lum- ber. Mease concluded that the bank was "the first correct specimen of style, called, improperly, the Gothic, in the United States." Though stiff and boxy, it was the closest thing Americans had seen to a building in the Gothic style. It was not, however, to find imitators.79

The Bank of the United States Branches Out

Between 1797 and 1800, the Bank of United States built new structures for three of its branches: Charleston, New York, and Boston. The Charleston branch was built at the civic hub of the city: the northeast corner of Broad and Meeting streets. The old South Carolina State- house-which since 1788 had been the Charles- ton County Courthouse-stood across Meeting Street, while venerable St. Michael's Church stood across Broad Street to the south. The New York branch and the nearby Bank of New York were both built on Wall Street west of William Street, beginning Wall Street's centuries-long association with finance. The Boston branch was built on State Street, a little more than a block east of the Old State House, which had recently been vacated for the new Bulfinch building on Beacon Hill. Although the locus of political power had shifted to Beacon Hill, the new banking houses were built on State Street, possibly out of conservatism but also because of the proximity to the commercial district and wharves.

The Charleston branch, built circa 1800- 1802, was a large, squarish brick block seven bays wide and six deep (fig. 22). The center three bays of the Broad Street facade featured engaged columns: Doric on the first floor and Composite on the second. The outer bays had Ionic pilasters on the first floor and Composite pilasters above. Each window had a semicircular fanlight above it

79 Latrobe to Clymer,June 18, 1808, in Van Home, Correspon- dence and Miscellaneous Papers of Benjamin Henry Latrobe, pp. 634- 35; John Henry Parker, A Concise Glossary of Terms Used in Grecian, Roman, Italian, and Gothic Architecture (London, 1875), reprinted asJohn Henry Parker, ClassicDictionary of Architecture (Poole, Eng.: New Orchard Editions, 1986), p. 62; Mease, Picture of Philadelphia, pp. 321-22.

34


Fig. 22. Charleston branch, Bank of the United States (now Charleston City Hall), 1800-1802. (Photo, Kenneth Hafertepe.)

and was set in a recessed arch. All corners were

quoined, and a stone balustrade ran along the roofline. An 1812 portrait of Adam Gilchrist, the

president of the bank, documents that the original exterior was brick and that the building was not covered in stucco until later. The use of su-

perimposed orders is quite Palladian and seems more in the spirit of the 175os or 176os than the 179os. Indeed, the Charleston area had two nota- ble examples of porticoes with superimposed orders: Drayton Hall (1738-42) and the Miles Brewton House (1769). But instead of reserving the columns only for the central portico, the de-

signer(s) of the banking house spread them across the entire facade. Though Gabriel Mani- gault has been suggested as the designer of the bank, the house of his brother Joseph, built at about this time, was much more Adamesque and thus much more in line with the federal style. Manigault may have had less influence on the

design of the bank than its builders, Edward

McGrath, Joseph Nicholson, and Andrew Gor- don. Yet the building was undeniably monumental: after the demise of the Bank of the United States, it became the Charleston City Hall.80

The recently built branch bank in New York

City, 1797-98, had a more domestic scale than the Charleston building and more neoclassical ornament (fig. 23). Master builder John I. Moore

designed a building five bays wide with a low, hipped roof covered by a balustrade. Broad steps led up to a recessed loggia three bays wide; this was similar to the entrance of the branch bank in

80 Carter L. Hudgins et al., eds., The Vernacular Architecture of Charleston and the Lowcountry (Charleston, S.C.: Vernacular Archi- tecture Forum, 1994), pp. 70-73, 78-79, 84-85;'Ravenel, Archi- tects of Charleston, pp. 66-68; Hammond, Banks and Politics in America, p. 168. The interior was remodeled in 1839 and completely gutted in 1882. The exterior was first covered in stucco in 1882. For the portrait of Gilchrist, see Carolina Art Association, Selections from the Collection of the Carolina Art Association (Charles- ton, S.C.: By the association, 1977), p. 78.

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Fig. 23. Archibald Robertson, Bank of New York (corner) and New York branch, Bank of the United States (thirdfrom left), New York City, 1798. Watercolor and ink; H. 83/8" X 1 ". (Collection of the New-York Historical Society.)

Boston, which was planned at virtually the same time. Though this might suggest a coordinated

design effort, it is more likely that both buildings were alluding to the arcaded entrance of the Bank of England. Unlike the freestanding portico of the parent bank in Philadelphia or the en-

gaged columns of the Charleston branch, the New York branch featured delicate pilasters and neoclassical swags. Little is known of the interior

except that it was decorated with plaster ornaments by William and Alexander O'Brien, who reported that "they intend to supply all master- builders with different kinds of enrichments in stucco," including cornices for rooms, ornamental ceilings, centerpieces, and chimney breasts. The New York branch was less monumental than its Philadelphia parent or its Charleston sister but

compensated for this with a display of modish neoclassical ornament inside and out.81

81 On John I. Moore and the O'Briens, see the O'Briens' advertisement in The Time Piece, April 11, 1798, reproduced in Rita Susswein Gottesman, comp., The Arts and Crafts in New York,

The Boston branch of the Bank of the United States, built on State Street in 1798, was designed by Charles Bulfinch, who had already produced plans for houses for Thomas Russell, an original director of the bank who died in 1796, and for

Joseph Barrell, a director whose Harvard years had overlapped those of the architect. Moreover, Bulfinch was soon to be associated with another director, Jonathan Mason Jr., whose house he would design on Beacon Hill. The thoroughly neoclassical facade of the bank was finished with

Philadelphia brick, the balustrade and cornice were Bath stone, and the Corinthian capitals and the eagle that perched atop the balustrade were artificial stone (fig. 24). As in the case of the New York branch, pilasters were preferred to the free-

standing portico found on the parent bank. Pri-

mary access into the banking room was from the street; however, the carriage gates on either side

I777-I779 (New York: New-York Historical Society, 1954), p. 205.

36


Fig. 24. Charles Bulfinch, elevation, Boston branch, Bank of the United States, 1798. From Asher Benjamin and Daniel Raynerd, The American Builder's Companion (Boston: Etheridge and Bliss, 1806), pl. 43. (Henry N. Flynt Library, Historic Deerfield, Inc.)

of the building led to a rear entrance to the Bank-

ing Room, which would be more secure for large deposits or withdrawals of cash or specie. Al-

though Bulfinch is not known to have visited Phil-

adelphia in the months between the completion of the Bank of the United States and his design of its Boston branch, he seems to have acquired information about its layout, as the combination of iron gates and a rear entrance into the Bank-

ing Room were also found in the parent bank. In 1806 Benjamin and Raynerd concluded that the

building, "though small, is very just in its proportions, and is entitled to the name of the neatest

public building in the state." Again, the basis of

praise for the building was not neoclassical sym- bolism but good proportion and ornamental restraint.82

82 Asher Benjamin and Daniel Raynerd, The American Builder's Companion (Boston: Etheridge and Bliss, 1806), pp. 65-66, pls. 43, 44. Kirker correctly notes that the bank was on the south side of State Street but then says it was pulled down in 1824 to make room for Solomon Willard's Greek temple, by which he presumably means the Boston branch of the Second Bank of the United States. Actually, Willard's bank was on the north side of State Street, closer to the Old State House. When the bank building was demolished, the eagle was saved and moved to the great as-

As in the Philadelphia bank, the key public space was the Banking Room, where the public- at least those who could contemplate applying for

large commercial loans-interacted with officials of the bank. Three arches led into an open loggia that gave access to the Banking Room, a squarish space with a gallery surrounded by Ionic columns

(fig. 25). Light was provided by four windows on the rear (south) wall and indirectly from additional windows above. Doors to each side of the entrance from the street led to the two day vaults; clearly, counters would have been placed to limit access to these doors. Beneath was the great vault, which, Benjamin and Raynerd wrote, "is arched over and built with a very thick wall." The front rooms of the basement could be accessed by the front stairway, but a separate stair led from the

Banking Room down to the most secure vault. "It is," they wrote, "allowed to be one of the most secure deposits for cash in the United States." It

sembly room in Faneuil Hall; Kirker, Architecture of Charles Bul- finch, pp. 141-43. On the bank directors, see the Columbian Centi- nel (Boston), January 28, 1792, p. 159; on their houses, see Kirker, Architecture of Charles Bulfinch, pp. 45-53, 86-88, 156-57, 196-98.

37


over the entrance loggia. A door on the inner wall

provided the only access onto the gallery above the Banking Room, from which the directors could observe the workings of the bank. On the outer wall three tall windows looked down onto

busy State Street. Here Bulfinch was alluding to the balcony of the nearby Old State House, where the provincial governor could look down State (then King) Street to the wharves where Boston's commercial activity took place.

Local Banks as Variations on a Theme

Fig. 25. Charles Bulfinch, section and plans of ground and basement floors, Boston branch, Bank of the United States, 1798. From Asher Benjamin and Daniel Raynerd, The American Builder's Companion (Boston: Etheridge and Bliss, 1806), pl. 44. (Henry N. Flynt Li- brary, Historic Deerfield, Inc.)

is likely that the Banking Room and the Direc- tors' Room had ceilings with stucco ornaments. Given that Raynerd was one of the leading stucco workers in Boston at the time, work at the bank

may have allowed him to observe the building and produce his rough drawings of it.83

The directors gained access to their private room by means of an elegant circular staircase to the right of the entrance. The room itself was

square, or nearly so, and occupied the three bal- ustraded bays on the second floor immediately

83 Benjamin and Raynerd, American Builder's Companion, p. 66.

Bulfinch certainly had an opportunity to examine the Bank of En- gland while he was in London. The use of an entrance loggia with stairs and smaller rooms to the side recalls Sampson's entrance pavilion, but Bulfinch's loggia led directly into the Banking Room. Bulfinch's plan was necessarily more compact.

The state-chartered banking houses of New En-

gland tended to reflect the influence of Bulfinch, whose restrained version of the neoclassical style informed so much of New England's federal architecture. Bulfinch was responsible for design- ing or remodeling five Boston banks, all on State Street (fig. 26). One year after the erection of the branch of the Bank of the United States in 1798, the Union Bank purchased the old Apthorp mansion on State Street, and Bulfinch was retained to

modify the interior for banking purposes and give the brick exterior a more fashionable facade. He

provided a design for a brick building for the Bos- ton Bank (1804), a stone building for the Massa- chusetts Bank (1809), and a stone structure for the Manufacturers and Mechanics Bank (1814- 15). These buildings, however, are poorly docu- mented; much more can be learned from Bul- finch's Essex Bank in Salem and from other Bulfinch-influenced banking houses.84

Though the most monumental banking houses were freestanding structures devoted

solely to the purposes of the institution, a number of local banks mixed quarters of the bank with commercial and residential space. In April 1804 the directors of the new Worcester Bank decided to build a brick house that would "accommodate a family and answer for banking purposes." The

design was for a double house, six bays wide- three for the banking house and three for the residence (fig. 27). The entrance portico had three

pairs of Ionic columns, one pair at each corner and one pair in the center, reflecting the two doors at the rear of the portico. The president of

84 Kirker, Architecture of Charles Bulfinch, pp. 368 (Union); 243 (Massachusetts); 373-74 (Boston); 292, 176 (Manufacturers and Mechanics), fig. 83 (an 1842 lithograph by B. W. Thayer and Co. of the south side of State Street between Congress and Kilby streets).

38


Fig. 26. J. R. Penniman and Abel Bowen, State Street and Old State House, 1825. From Caleb Snow, A History of Boston (Boston: A. Bowen, 1825). (Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association Library, Deerfield, Mass.) The branch Bank of the United States, with eagle perched on top, is on the left (south) side of the street; opposite are several Bulfinch bank buildings; near the State House, with cupola, the pediment of the branch of the Second Bank of the United States is partially visible on the left side of the street.

the bank, Daniel WaldoJr., lived in the north side of the building for twenty-five years. In 1828 a house and store was built on the north side of the building, which led Waldo to erect a grand house with a monumental two-story Ionic portico on the south side of the bank. In 1833 the north side of the bank building shifted from residential to public space: it was occupied by the Worcester Post Office. Clearly the directors of the bank saw the building form as being appropriate both for banking purposes and for a residence for the bank's president. Given that banks and corporations were mistrusted as artificial persons, the dual nature of the building might have served to reassure the citizenry of Worcester County that this was not an alien institution but one that was accessible, personal, and local in nature.85

85 Kirker, Architecture of Charles Bulfinch, pp. 194-95; Charles A. Chase, Worcester Bank, i804-I904 (Worcester, Mass.: Davis

The New Hampshire Bank in Portsmouth, built in 1804-5 by master builder BradburyJohn- son, was also designed as a multi-use building (fig. 28). Under a one-story porch were steps up to a central doorway leading into the bank and steps up to side doors leading to projecting end bays. Immediately inside were circular stairs that led to second-story offices. Both the entrance to the bank and the French door opening onto the balcony above were arched and heavily rusticated in a manner reminiscent of James Gibbs's designs. The circular stairs were perhaps the most stylish feature of the building and recalled Bul- finch's design for the Bank of the United States. The directors of the New Hampshire Bank clearly hoped to gain rental income from the spaces above and to associate the institution with the

Press, 1904), pp. 6-7, 16-17; Dwight, Travels in New England, i: 267. The Worcester Bank burned on March 6, 1843.

39


Fig. 27. Samuel E. Brown, Worcester Bank, Worcester, Mass., 1804. From Harold Kirker, The Archi- tecture of Charles Bulfinch (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1969), fig. 92. The bank, which is on the left, is attributed to Charles Bulfinch.

Fig. 28. New Hampshire Bank, Portsmouth, 1804-5. From John Mead Howells, Lost Examples of Colonial Architecture (New York: W. Helburn, 1931). The bank is attributed to Bradbury Johnson.

40


Fig. 29. Alexander Parris, elevation, Portland Bank, Portland, Maine, 1806. Ink on paper. (American Anti- quarian Society.)

emerging professional class who would rent those

spaces. Another multipurpose facility was constructed in 1805 on nearby Market Square to house both the Portsmouth Bank and the New

Hampshire Fire and Marine Insurance Com-

pany, an institution useful to local property own- ers as well as merchants importing goods from overseas.86

The Portland Bank in Maine, designed by Al- exander Parris in 1806, was cut from a Bulfinch

pattern as codified by Asher Benjamin (fig. 29). The three-story structure with an arcaded ground floor echoed the facade of a small town house, plate 33 in The American Builder's Companion, published in the year the bank was designed. Parris centered the door and used the ground-floor arcade to visually support four giant engaged Doric columns above. In the central tablet of the balustrade was a carved eagle, situated much like the one on the branch bank in Boston. The principal entrance was to be through double doors with an elaborate semicircular fanlight above both the door and the side windows. The windows in the

86 Garvin, "Academic Architecture," pp. 399-402.

two bays flanking the door were also round- arched and set within another recessed arch. Thus the scale of the building was fairly domestic; in fact, the third floor most likely served as a residence.87

The Portland Bank was also planned with office or retail space. Inside the door Parris intended to have a passage with plasterwork in imitation of stone vaulting (fig. 30). This space gave access to the two front rooms, which each had a window on the street. At the right rear corner of the passage, a skylit circular staircase ascended to offices on the second and third floor. Apparently the directors suggested that the front door be recessed so that the two front rooms could have their own entrance from the street (fig. 31). As a result these two rooms would not have access into the rest of the building. This upset Parris's plans for vaulting the passage, and the doorway that

provided access to the circular stairway was dra-

matically narrowed, perhaps so that it could have a door that could be locked. Moreover, the third floor of this bank was probably intended as residential space for one of the bank's employees. The Banking Room was 30 feet wide and 28 feet

deep. At the rear the wall curved into a semicir- cle, with four windows with built-in seats on the curved wall and a fireplace as the focal point of the room. The day vault was through a door im-

mediately to the left upon entering the Banking Room, much as it was in Bulfinch's Bank of the United States in Boston.88

The Essex Bank in Salem, Massachusetts, de-

signed by Bulfinch in 1811, was also domestic in character (fig. 32). Although it was a freestanding structure and built of brick, it was only two stories tall. Originally two pairs of Ionic columns supported the one-story porch, similar to that of the Worcester Bank. The first-floor windows were round-arched and tall, reflecting the tall ceilings of these interior spaces. On entering the building one was confronted with a central passage with stairs, as if it were just another gentry house. To the left (north) were two main rooms, which were also on a domestic scale and served as offices. To

87 Though the bank was destroyed by a fire in 1866, seven drawings by Parris-an elevation, details of the doorway and one of the columns, plans for the second floor and a section, and two plans for the first floor-do survive. Alexander Parris sketchbook, sheets 19, 30, 31, 34, 35, 38, 39, American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Mass.

88 "This plan approv'd of by the Directors," is presumably in Parris's handwriting; Alexander Parris sketchbook, sheet 19, American Antiquarian Society.

41


Fig. 30. Alexander Parris, section plan, Portland Bank, Portland, Maine, 1806. Ink on paper. (American Antiquarian Society.) The Banking Room is at the lower left, and the Directors' Room is immediately above it.

the south of the passage, however, was a single large room running the depth of the building. It is unclear whether a bank officer resided in the building, but the presence of an ell on the north side of the building suggests the possibility.89

The Banking Room occupied the large room south of the passage (fig. 33). On the south wall-the long side opposite the door from the

passage-a projection curved forward from the wall, allowing space for shelving protected by an iron door. This served as the day vault. On the east (rear) wall was another iron door leading to the night vault; this single-story space projected beyond the back wall of the building and was en- closed with large blocks of granite. Presumably there were counters on the south and east sides of the room. There were no fireplaces in this largest room; rather, it was heated by means of a Russian brick stove, just as the Pay Hall of the Bank of En-

89 Kirker, Architecture of Charles Bulfinch, pp. 266-68. Bulfinch included the Essex Bank on his list of public buildings. It is extant and is located at 11 Central Street in Salem.

gland drew its warmth from a large cast-iron stove. In the ceiling above was an oval stucco

centerpiece, probably by Raynerd, the Boston stucco worker who had drawn the plates of Bul- finch's Bank of the United States for The American Builder's Companion in 1806 (fig. 34).90

The key private space in all of these banking houses was the Directors' Room. At the Bank of

England the Directors' Room was on the ground floor well away from the street and facing an interior court, but in American banking houses seclu- sion and security were achieved by placing the Di- rectors' Room on the second floor. In the case of Parris's Portland Bank and Bulfinch's Essex Bank

(fig. 35), the Directors' Room was immediately over the Banking Room and thus shared the same

proportions and position in the building. In Port-

90 Columbian Centinel (Boston), February 5, 1812, noted that "the Russian Brick Stoves have recently been introduced in Sa- lem, and promise to make a great saving in the important article of fuel.-A handsome one has been built in the Essex Bank, two in a meeting-house, and other in private buildings."

42


Fig. 31. Alexander Parris, floor plan as built, Portland Bank, Portland, Maine, 1806. Ink on paper. (Ameri- can Antiquarian Society.)

land a door in the bank's vestibule led to a second

skylit circular stair to the Directors' Room above. The second staircase was necessary because a thick wall divided the building in half on the second and third floors. The Directors' Room shared the distinctive and fashionable round end with the Banking Room below and had a single fireplace. The room was at the rear of the structure, which probably provided a good deal of privacy though not much of a view from the windows. In Salem the access to the Directors' Room was via a single-run staircase, considerably less im-

pressive than Parris's circular staircase. However, the room had two conventional fireplaces on the south wall and was lit by windows in the front and back.

Two banking houses were quite closely based on British designs: the New York State Bank in Al-

bany and the Union Bank in Baltimore. Master builder Philip Hooker's 1803 New York State Bank in Albany was, perhaps, the most Ad-

amesque banking house in the United States (fig. 36). The facade was close to that of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce in London, which was published in the first volume of The Works in Architecture of R. and J. Adam. Hooker compressed the upper two floors into one but kept the arrangement of two pairs of engaged Ionic columns framing a Pal- ladian window set within a relieving arch. He abandoned the single central entrance however, replacing it with a large central window with twen-

ty-eight panes flanked by two doors. The large front window lit the Banking Room, which was accessed by the door on the right. The door on the left opened onto a staircase that led to the Direc- tors' Room and other apartments.91

In Baltimore the Union Bank, built in 1807 by local master builder Robert Cary Long Sr., re- flected the influence of another British neoclassical designer, Sir John Soane (fig. 37). Ironically, the source of inspiration was not Soane's work at the Bank of England but a design for a small villa, published as plate 34 in Sketches in Architecture. Soane's rather freewheeling neoclassical villa had four tall Ionic columns fronting a recessed porch with another two columns at the corners. This domestic design was monumentalized by Long for his banking house as he emphasized the temple

91 Hooker's New York State Bank was copied in 1815 for the Ontario Branch Bank in Utica; Bucher, Neat Plain Modern Stile, pp. 84-87, 115, 143. Adam and Adam, Works in Architecture, i: pl. 4.

43


Fig. 32. Essex Bank, Salem, Mass., 1811. (Photo, Kenneth Hafertepe).

Fig. 33. Banking Room, Essex Bank, Salem, Mass., 1811. (Photo, Kenneth Hafertepe.) The day vault is on the right; the night vault is on the rear wall.

44


Fig. 34. Attributed to Daniel Raynerd, stucco medal- lion, Essex Bank, Salem, Mass., 1811. (Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Mass.)

form and transformed the round arched windows of the Soane design into standard rectangular windows, distinct from the windows set within round arches below. Above the recessed portico was a sculptural relief set within a lunette, which has been attributed to Giovanni Andrei and Giu-

seppe Franzoni, sculptors who had come from It-

aly to work on the U.S. Capitol. The relief on the bank depicted the seal of the State of Maryland supported by Neptune and Ceres, suggesting that both mercantile and agricultural pursuits were the foundation of the state's wealth.92

Two features of the Union Bank in Baltimore may reflect the influence of Latrobe's Bank of

Pennsylvania. On the side elevations two pairs of Ionic pilasters frame the windows of what was

probably the Banking Room below and the Direc- tors' Room above. The placement of the Banking

92 Soane, Sketches in Architecture, pl. 34; Richard H. Howland and Eleanor P. Spencer, The Architecture of Baltimore (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1953), pp. 54-56; on Andrei and Franzoni, see Hamlin, Benjamin Henry Latrobe, pp. 267-70.

Room in the center of the building and its articu- lation on the exterior related closely to Latrobe's

design as did the two squarish guard houses with low pyramidal roofs that graced the two front corners of the property. Long, however, was not

quite as demonstrative as Latrobe in the expression of a fortress-like quality in his design: each

guardhouse has a round-arched window on the side facing the street rather than the blind arch on those of the Pennsylvania bank.93

Before 1820 the only bank building outside

Philadelphia to feature a monumental freestand-

ing portico was the Hartford Bank, which em-

ployed the Tuscan order for its portico (fig. 38). This bank, designed by John Leffingwell in 181 1, sat just to the northeast of Bulfinch's State House. The bank was built of brick except for the founda- tions and the front elevation, which were made of the same brownstone as the ground floor of the State House. However, the Doric order of Bulfinch's State House gave way to the even more austere Tuscan order on the bank, and the

hipped-roof building with a central portico gave way to a pure temple form. Unlike the fortress- like windowless facade of Latrobe's Bank of Penn-

sylvania, the Hartford Bank featured two large round-arched windows that flanked the arched

entry. Though there were some sharp differ- ences, the Hartford Bank was the second Ameri- can banking house after the Bank of Pennsyl- vania to use the temple form with a freestand-

ing portico across the front; like its Pennsylvania prototype, it functioned exclusively as a banking house.94

An Ending and a Beginning

The Bank of the United States proved to have had a beneficial effect on the American economy not

only by funding the government debt but also by regulating state and local banks-in essence, ar-

bitrating the bitter disputes that erupted between rival banks in various localities. Despite the objec- tions of Jefferson and Madison about the consti-

93 Alexander, "Union Bank," pp. 135-38. 94 P. H. Woodward, One Hundred Years of the Hartford Bank,

1792-I892 (Hartford, Conn.: Case, Lockwood and Brainard, 1892), p. 98, frontispiece; Leffingwell's plan for the bank is refer- enced in a contract with Nathaniel Watson and Eli Wood for oak timbers and joinery work in "Book of Contracts for Building Hart- ford Bank," Connecticut Historical Society, Hartford; Dwight, Travels in New England, 1:169; Hosley, V'Connecticut State House," pp. 121-24.

45

Winterthur Portfolio 35: I

Fig. 35. Directors' Room, Essex Bank, Salem, Mass., 1811. (Photo, Kenneth Hafertepe.)

tutionality of the bank in 1791, Jefferson did

nothing during his two terms as president to dis- mantle the institution. In 1809 Albert Gallatin,

j ! secretary of the treasury for both of Jefferson's terms and for the first of Madison's, urged Con-

.. ,, gress to renew the charter of the bank. However, ,s .....r the state and local banks, sensing an opportunity

to eliminate a powerful rival, succeeded in stir-

ring up enough criticism to assure the defeat of the bill to renew the charter, which expired on

...; : ..~. .........^^ . :^. ~ i^ '",.......^ ^M arch 4, 18 1i.i9 IFt In that month the stockholders of the Bank of

1803. Photograph ca. 1865. (Albany Publicthe United States formally conveyed the institution to a committee of eighteen former directors, ' who were to oversee its liquidation. But in May 1812, wealthy merchant Stephen Girard bought

'%;;:::-':'.-. ~the bank building, the house occupied by the cashier, plus "the Iron Chests, Scales, Furniture and other apparatus now in use in the said Bank," for $115,ooo. He then opened Girard's Bank, with many former employees of the Bank of the United States on hand, including cashier

George Simpson. Although it was bitterly opposed both by the Bank of Pennsylvania and by

Fig. 36. Philip Hooker, New York State Bank, Albany, 1803. Photograph ca. 1865. (Albany Public Library). 5 Wettereau, "Oldest Bank Building," pp. 71, 73.

46


Fig. 37. Robert Cary Long Sr., Union Bank, Baltimore, 1807. (Maryland Historical Society.)

the Bank of Philadelphia, the new institution was soon on solid financial footing.96

Although Congress refused to renew the charter of the Bank of the United States, Gallatin's

pro-bank stance was continued by Alexander J. Dallas, PresidentJames Madison's third secretary of the treasury. Dallas proposed the creation of the Second Bank of the United States, in Philadel-

phia, to which Congress granted a twenty-year charter in 1816. Ironically, Girard became the

largest subscriber to the capital stock of the new bank and was named to the first board of directors; he retained control of his own bank as well.97

When the Second Bank of the United States was chartered in 1816, its directors acquired land between Chestnut and Library streets, just west of Latrobe's Bank of Philadelphia, and announced a competition for the design of a new banking house. The directors required "a chaste imitation of Grecian Architecture, in its simplest and least expensive form." The competition was entered by Latrobe but also by William Strickland, a

96 Wettereau, "Oldest Bank Building," pp. 73-75. 97 Wettereau, "Oldest Bank Building," p. 75.

young architect who had once studied with and worked for Latrobe. While Latrobe proposed a Greek temple with Doric porticoes at each end and a large squarish block rising out of its center, which would express the great domed Banking Room within, Strickland submitted a plan for a

two-story scheme with a Doric basement and an Ionic temple above. The premium was awarded to Strickland, but only after he simplified his de-

sign to a Doric temple not unlike the Parthenon

(fig. 39).98 Latrobe later claimed that the design was his

own, except for the principal room. However, neither architect had originally proposed a pure temple-form building. Ironically, Latrobe was correct in his assertion that the principal room was based not on his own competition entry. In fact, Strickland's Banking Room was based on that in Blodget's Bank of the United States. The

98 Hamlin, Benjamin Henry Latrobe, pp. 499-503; Cohen and Brownell, Architectural Drawings of Benjamin Henry Latrobe, 2:708- 36; Agnes Addison Gilchrist, William Strickland: Architect and Engi- neer, 1788-I854 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1950), PP- 53-57-

47


Fig. 38. John Leffingwell, Hartford Bank, Hartford, Conn., 1811. From P. H. Woodward, One Hundred Years of the Hartford Bank, 1792-1892 (Hartford, Conn.: Case, Lockwood, and Brainard, 1892), frontispiece. (W. E. B. Du Bois Library, University of Massa- chusetts at Amherst.)

Second Bank had a barrel vault supported by two rows of columns-now Greek Ionic rather than Roman Corinthian-and with less space on each side (figs. 40, 41). The barrel vault ran the same way in the Second Bank as it did in the first: east to west. The principal improvement was that the entrances were on the north and south. Such an arrangement allowed for large windows at each end of the room, which provided considerably more light than did Blodget's design. Moreover, smaller offices flanking the vestibule allowed the Banking Room to be perfectly symmetrical, without the awkward spaces created by Blodget's vestibule. Strickland explained that the clerk's desks were to be placed between the columns, which allowed patrons to circulate in the center of the room but limited their access to the offices and vaults. From the exterior the large round-headed window flanked by lower square-headed windows, expresses the shape of the space inside but also reads like a Palladian window. Although Strick- land had learned his profession at the feet of La- trobe, his first major work recalled the design of the amateur Blodget, but with decided improvements. Moreover, his adaptation of the Greek

Fig. 39. William Strickland, Second Bank of the United States, Philadelphia, 1818-24. (Photo, Kenneth Haf- ertepe.)

temple form was to be highly influential for the next two decades not only in the design of bank-

ing houses but in all building types. With the demise of the Bank of the United

States in 1811, the building that housed the Bos- ton branch was acquired by the newly chartered State Bank, the only bank in Boston with Republi- can sympathies. Thus when the Boston branch of the Second Bank opened for business in 1818, the directors were obligated to start from scratch. The new building, erected in 1824, was designed by Solomon Willard, a New England native who had worked in Boston for Charles Bulfinch and Peter Banner. He made trips to the south-in-

cluding Philadelphia-in 1810-11 and again in

1818, and, indeed, on the latter trip he met La- trobe and certainly saw the Bank of Pennsylvania.

The branch of the Second Bank was originally designed for the site of the Old State House at the head of State Street, which had been abandoned by the state government after the completion of Bulfinch's State House on Beacon Hill in 1797. A banking house in this location would have been an extraordinary statement of the institution's power and authority. However, the town

48

Banking Houses in the United States 49

Fig. 40. William Strickland, floor plan, Second Bank of the United States, Philadelphia, 1818-24. From Agnes Addison Gilchrist, William Strickland: Architect and Engi- neer, 1788-I854 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsyl- vania Press, 1950), pl. 8B. (Hillyer Art Library, Smith College, Northampton, Mass.)

of Boston refused to sell the building and the bank was built on a less imposing site on the north side of the street just east of the State House (see fig. 26). It was also intended to have Greek Doric porticoes on both the front and rear facades; with the new site, the rear portico would have faced an alley, and it was discarded from the plans. As a further economy measure, the front portico with four Doric columns became two Doric columns framed by Doric piers that were engaged to the side walls (fig. 42). A low saucer dome rose from an elevated podium. Judging from the engraving of the building, the dome of the Boston branch was much closer to the origi-

nal design for the Bank of Pennsylvania than was Latrobe's bank as built. The only significant deviation from Latrobe's design was the inclusion of windows on the main facade, on both the first and second floors.99

The main door led into the passage, which was flanked by the offices of the president and cashier-more in the manner of the Bank of Philadel- phia than the Bank of Pennsylvania (fig. 43). Be- yond the passage was the domed Banking Room, "36 feet in diameter and 44 feet to the top of the curb stone," lit by windows on the sides. This was somewhat smaller than Latrobe's Banking Room, which was 45 feet in diameter and 60 feet high, but the proportions were similar. Three vaults were directly behind the Banking Room as were subsidiary offices. The Directors' Room was above the offices of the president and cashier, accessed through a circular stairway between the Banking Room and the Cashier's Office. Willard thus avoided the Bank of Pennsylvania's awkward route to the Directors' Room. Nevertheless, the branch bank was a virtual homage to Latrobe.

Both of Latrobe's Philadelphia banks were demolished in the nineteenth century. In 1837 Latrobe's Gothic Bank of Philadelphia was demolished to make way for a new building by Strickland. The Bank of Pennsylvania abandoned its neoclassical building in 1857, when it acquired a site on the north side of Chestnut Street, across the street from the new Bank of Philadelphia. Ar- chitect John M. Gries was retained to design a then-fashionable Italian palazzo. However, the bank failed in the financial panic of that year, and the building was acquired by its old rival, the Bank of Philadelphia; the structure was completed and the bank moved into it in 1859, thus abandoning Strickland's building after only twenty years. Latrobe's bank building on Second Street was demolished in 1867.100

No bank built during the twenty-year life of the Bank of the United States adopted its use of the Roman Corinthian order or its Roman barrel

99 Hammond, Banks and Politics in America, pp. 165-66, 147; William H. Wheildon, Memoir of Solomon Willard, Architect and Su- perintendent of the Bunker Hill Monument (Boston: The Monument Assoc., 1865), pp. 28, 30, 34-35, 38, 40; Caleb H. Snow, A History of Boston, the Metropolis of Massachusetts, from Its Origins to the Present Period (Boston: A. Bowen, 1825), pp. 374-76.

'00 Gilchrist, William Strickland, p. 94, pl. 32B; John Andrew Gallery, ed., Philadelphia Architecture: A Guide to the City (Cam- bridge: MIT Press for the Foundation for Architecture, 1984), p. 58. The Bank of New York also demolished its 1798 building and built a 4-story Italianate structure on the same site in 1858; Nev- ins, History of the Bank of New York and Trust Company, p. 82.


Fig. 41. William Strickland, Banking Room, Second Bank of the United States, Philadelphia, 1818-24. (Independence National Historical Park.)

Fig. 42. Drawn by Solomon Willard, engraved by Abel Bowen, Boston branch, Second Bank of the United States, 1824. From Caleb Snow, A History of Boston (Boston: A. Bowen, 1825).

5?


Fig. 43. Floor plan, Boston branch, Second Bank of the United States, 1824. From Caleb Snow, A History of Bos- ton (Boston: A. Bowen, 1825).

vault for the Banking Room. Nor did any of the banks of this period imitate Latrobe's use of the Greek Ionic order or his domed Banking Room. It may well be that the Bank of the United States was considered to be too large to be a prototype for other banks and the Bank of Pennsylvania too expensive. Ironically, the only subsequent bank-

ing houses that referred to either of these build-

ings were the Second Bank of the United States in Philadelphia and its Boston branch.

During the twenty years in which the Bank of the United States was in operation, American

banks never reached the degree of specialization of the Bank of England. Rather, only certain key spaces were deemed essential: the Banking Room, where public business took place; the Di- rectors' Room, where decisions about loans were made; the vaults; and the offices of the president and the cashier. Each architect was faced with the difficult issue of how to provide access for the bank's customers while maintaining privacy for the directors and security for deposits. Such issues mainly affected well-to-do merchants who formed both the board of directors and the clien- tele they served.

The public image of these institutions was

played out on the facades of their buildings. With the sole exception of Latrobe's Gothic-style Bank of Philadelphia, all these banking houses were built in some variant of the classical style, be it Palladian, Roman, or Greek. None, however, seem to have been chosen for their associations with Greece or Rome or even Renaissance Italy; rather, they all drew on a common rhetoric of classicism, which Jefferson had already expressed as the desire for symmetry and taste, unburdened

by excessive ornament. This rhetoric of a neat and plain style was

clearly articulated in contemporary discourse about these early American banking houses. The discussion in the Gazette of the United States suggested that the Bank of the United States was both "splendid" and "neat." Blodget saw the

building as both an engine of American economic growth and a model for American architecture, a model that stood in the classical tradition but that, in its comparative simplicity, avoided the enervating luxuriousness of Euro-

pean architecture. For Latrobe the ornamental elaboration of the Bank of the United States was not only unnecessary but counter to the achievement of true simplicity. He saw the route to that

simplicity through the judicious adaptation of Grecian forms. Yet the architectural objective, at least on the level of rhetoric, remained the same: a republican simplicity appropriate for American institutions. Bulfinch wrote little about his architecture, but his followers Benjamin and Raynerd declared his branch Bank of the United States "the neatest public building in the state." Al-

though Bulfinch's branch bank featured pilasters and other applied ornament, the architect sought to strike the proper balance between the plain and the elaborate. Bulfinch outlived both Blodget and Latrobe and succeeded the latter as architect of the Capitol. His appointment by President

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James Monroe signaled that the Era of Good Feel- ings was political as well as architectural.

While the Bank of the United States was characterized as a building poised between the neat and the splendid, its monumentality gave it a symbolic preeminence over other American banks of the period. It was far larger than any other banking house (including those of Latrobe), and it was far more monumental than any of the government buildings in Philadelphia (including Congress Hall and Alexander Hamilton's own

Treasury Department). The bank's grand scale al- luded to its role as an unofficial central bank and to its role in international finance. The Bank of the United States also provided a classical exam-

surely as its fiscal policies regulated the local institutions. At the same time local banks were negoti- ating their own place in the economy of their region, they were building banking houses that were domestic in scale and often served other uses in addition to banking, be it as residential, commercial, or office space. Banking houses in the United States thus functioned as public ven- ues for financial transactions, as private meeting places for board deliberations, and as secure storage spaces for cash and securities. The first generation of banking houses thus performed a symbolic balancing act between grandeur and simplicity, between security and accessibility, and between national and local priorities.

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"Banking Houses in the United States: The First Generation, 1781-1811"

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