Back posting around October 30, when I might have seen another thing or two to write about, with any luck.

One more destination on this year’s Open House Chicago: the Bridgeview Bank Building in Uptown Chicago, originally known as Sheridan Trust & Savings and then the Uptown National Bank. It’s one of the taller buildings in the neighborhood. You enter the building on Broadway, into a small foyer. From there, a grand staircase leads to the second floor, which is mostly occupied by a resplendent former bank lobby.

The building, and the lobby, is a Marshall & Fox design from 1924, and it’s ornate. And solid.

It occurred to me as I wandered around the marble and brass and ironwork of this sturdy structure that the FDIC probably helped kill off this kind of bank design. Before accounts were insured, a bank needed to look solid. The more solid, the better — at least as far as reassuring your customers was concerned. But if customers can’t lose their deposits, that consideration takes a back seat.

Just speculation. It’s also likely that the generation of bankers who came of age during the Depression (e.g., Milton Drysdale) considered such ornamentation frivolous spending. I should also note that the splendor of Sheridan Trust & Savings’ lobby didn’t save the bank during the Depression.

Never mind, Marshall & Fox did a stunning bank lobby. Here’s a closer look at the ceiling.

The tables where customers used to get ready for the tellers still sport some striking lamps. I want a couple of these at the colorless suburban banks I visit.
There are bank offices ringing the lobby, but otherwise the space isn’t used any more, certainly not for retail banking. Too bad; it should be used for something.

Down on the lower level is a vault — the very picture of a bank vault from another time.
It isn’t used for anything any more, either. I doubt that the bank would consider it, but maybe a hipster restaurant can go upstairs, along with a hipster bar in the vault.