First National Bank Building (Ann Arbor)

Built between 1927 and 1930, the ten-story First National Bank Building possesses significance as a local visual landmark and as Ann Arbor's tallest and most prestigious office building at the time of its construction. It is also important in architectural terms as a major Michigan (and Ann Arbor's only) example of the 1920s office tower with its steel-frame construction and non-load-bearing exterior walls displaying restrained and sophisticated, period--in this case, Italian Romanesque--detailing. Designed by Ann Arbor architects Fry and Kasurin, the building originally housed the First National Bank and eight floors of office space largely occupied by prominent professional firms. The First National Bank, established in 1863, was the oldest bank in Washtenaw County and the first 'national' bank chartered in Michigan and the twenty-second in the nation.

In 1936 the bank merged with two other financial institutions and vacated the building. Subsequently the banking lobby was converted into retail and office space. The two-story main entrance was enclosed at this time and a new storefront constructed at the corner of the building. The building dominated the Ann Arbor skyline for over thirty years.

Floodlights illuminated the tower during its early years making it a visual focal point of Ann Arbor. The building's height has been surpassed by other Ann Arbor structures, but the structure remains by a margin of three stories the tallest on Main Street. The significance of the First National Bank Building was given formal recognition by the 1973 Ann Arbor Historic Architecture Survey which identified the building as one of outstanding architectural value for the city. The First National Bank Building is significant as one of a number of office towers, usually containing banking rooms in their street levels, which were built in major Michigan cities such as Detroit, Lansing, Battle Creek, Kalamazoo, and Grand Rapids in the 1925-1930 period.

Most of these structures--including the First National Bank Building--with their blocky massing, craggy parapet treatments, vertical banks of windows, and restrained and elegant decorative schemes, seem to reflect the influence of the rejected Eitel Saarinen entry in the Chicago Tribune Tower competition. The building is also notable for its handsome arched, portal entrance to the banking room (now partly obliterated) and other Romanesque details. These seem to harken back to the 1925 Bankers Trust Company Building in Detroit, designed by Smith, Hinchman & Grylls of Detroit, and to York & Sawyer's Bowery Savings Bank on 42nd Street in New York City. The latter structure appears to be the grandfather of all such Romanesque banking structures.

In the late 1920s Italian Romanesque became the fashionable style for Michigan banks. Some other imposing office towers and bank buildings in Michigan containing Italian Romanesque stylistic references are the 1927 Michigan National Bank (by Smith, Hinchman & Grylls) in Grand Rapids, the 1928-29 Peoples Bank in Holland, the 1928-29 Old-Merchants National Bank (now Security National Bank) in Battle Creek, and the 1929-31 Capital Bank (now Michigan National Tower) and 1931-32 Bank of Lansing in Lansing.

Occupying a street corner site in the heart of Ann Arbor's central business district, the First National Bank Building was constructed in the 1927-1930 period. A steel-frame office block, the building consists of a ten-story tower and subsidiary, two- and five-story, side and rear sections. The structure's principal facades are clothed in light-colored terra cotta and exhibit a restrained and elegant, Romanesque, decorative scheme. Constructed in stages between 1927 and 1930, the First National Bank Building is located on the southeast corner of Main and Washington streets, in the center of the downtown area.

Rectangular in shape, the building has a frontage of 66 feet on Main Street and 124 feet on Washington Street. The building is of three different heights. A ten-story tower occupies the northwest corner of the site, overlooking the intersection of Main and Washington streets. The northeast and southwest portions of the building are five stories in height while the southeast portion is two stories in height.

The northern portion of the building was completed in 1929; the southern in 1930. The First National Bank Building is a dignified example of modified Romanesque architecture. The structure has a steel frame; the principal facades are clad in terra cotta. Architect Paul Kasurin described the exterior of the building in 1929 as having an appearance of 'simple and dignified luxury... suggested by the excellence of materials and restraint of design rather than by lavish use of ornament.

The richness of the terra cotta is accentuated by the polychrome ornament about the main entrance, in the spandrels between the windows of the third and fourth floors and again in the upper part of the building.' The structure's broad vertical bands of terra cotta and the banks of narrow windows separated by thin terra cotta mullions give the building strong vertical lines. Gargoyles are mounted immediately below a decorative roof cornice. When the building opened, its top was illuminated by sixteen, 1,000-watt flood lights, but these have since been removed. The structure's east and south (rear) facades are constructed of buff-color, common brick.

The building was constructed by the First National Bank, the customer lobby of which occupied the corner, first-floor space when the building opened. Architect Kasurin described this portion of the building as follows: 'The building's... terra cotta facing above a polished granite base is punctuated on the Main Street side by a tall, arched entrance of elaborately grilled glass, ... a great portal leading from the sidewalk through a marble vestibule, protected by massive iron grilles of Romanesque design, into the banking room, two full stories in height....' In 1935 the First National Bank vacated the building and the two-story banking lobby was then subdivided horizontally: the first floor was converted into retail space while office space was created on the second level. In addition, modifications were made to the exterior of the building. The lower part of the arched, two-story entrance to the bank lobby was enclosed and a new storefront constructed at the street corner.

To the south of the original bank entrance on Main Street is the lobby entrance for the upper floors of the building. In the words of architect Kasurin, 'The elevator lobby, finished with black terrazzo floor, black and gold marble base and trim, Italian travertine walls, bronze doorways and richly decorated coffered ceiling, forms a pleasing contrast of color and texture.' About 1960 the terrazzo floor was carpeted and a dropped ceiling was installed, concealing the coffered ceiling which, however, remains intact. The bank lobby occupied only part of the first floor of the building. To the east of the bank lobby on Washington Street were (and are) three retail bays.

To the south of the lobby entrance on Main Street was (and is) a single retail bay. The structure's present owners intend to remove the 1950s street corner storefront, reopen the former banking room's arched portal as an entrance, and restore the facade as much as possible to its original design as part of an overall rehabilitation of the building for continued commercial use.