JF Ptak Science Books Post 1811
In the History of Holes there exits a subcategory among many others that addresses holes in buildings and their filling-up. The "holes" of course must be openings for windows, and the filled-in bit are the windows themselves.
The great American architect Louis Sullivan designed a number of bank buildings large-on-the-small--really, quite small for banks--but outfitted them with some spectacular detail, some of which were the windows, and some of which worked. The size and scope of his (1914) Merchants National Bank, in Grinnell, Iowa, building is wonderful, though I've got to say that the enormous window in the facade and the crenulated baroque cartouche is really quite too much. I don't know where it all came from, but it seems as though it is from some other--much larger--building. The idea seems to work though on some of he other buildings in this "series" of small-but-involved bank buildings--his "Jewel Boxes"--and particularly with larger, half-circular windows, but not I think with his pinhole camera ocular god effort here.
(There's plenty of time to discuss windows and holes and such outside of the work of Louis Sullivan's (1856-1924) "jewel boxes", and I can hardly wait to have a look at Edward Lutyen's (1869-1944) proposal for the massive neo-gothic Liverpool Anglican Cathedral, above, where the windows are most uncompromising, but that will keep for later. Don't look now, but that would have been the world's largest dome).
And some of the other Sullivan minor miracles, his "Jewel Boxes", can be seen below as they exist today. This first example, The Peoples Savings Bank in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, was built in 1911. If you squint your eyes a bit you can see what this building was meant to be, though today it lives in a case of urban bits of blight and a massive block of a building that seems to be pushing the poor Sullivan building into the street.
The Nation's Farmers Bank of Owatonna, Minnesota is another rectangular box of a building, though the fenestration here seems to be most agreeable:
Here we are in Sidney, Ohio, at the People's Federal Savings and Loan Association, built 1917.
This jewel is a little deceiving--it looks to be tiny, and it is obscured by some modern mess, bu the building is absolutely alive in it many small ways, not eh least of which is he row of gorgeous small windows at the side of the building. This is the Henry Adams building, built in 1912. Gorgeous.
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The Farmers and Merchants Union Bank in Columbus, Ohio, again visits the massive liking for fabulist and fantastically heavy accoutrement, cartouche, surrounding the sign for the building, trying to eek out a reason for its own existence by the window.
And who wouldn't want to have this building for their own? Almost completely degraded by the "Bank One" sign, and the removal of its door (replaced by a trash can and an ATM machine), the Purdue State Bank of West Lafayette, Indiana, built in 1914, tries to live up to its heritage behind these gross treatments. It is certainly a building worth saving, with fine details all the way 'round--save now for its door.
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