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In Philadelphia -- unlike in Pittsburgh -- the historic interior of a Mellon Bank is being saved
Wednesday, September 08, 1999 By Patricia Lowry, Post-Gazette Architecture Critic
Mellon Bank has sold another of its historic banking halls, which will open as part of a Ritz-Carlton hotel in Philadelphia next spring.
But Philadelphia won't be losing an important interior, as Pittsburgh did this summer after Mellon sold its Downtown building at 514 Smithfield St. to the May Co. for a Lord & Taylor department store.
Instead, Philadelphia's great banking hall, modeled on the Pantheon, will become the hotel's centerpiece, housing restaurants and public areas.
When it opens next spring, the Ritz-Carlton will comprise two adjacent former bank buildings -- the Pantheon-inspired building, constructed between 1905 and 1908, and a tower completed in 1923.
The earlier building, known as the Dome Building, has an interesting design history.
After Girard Trust Co. president Effingham B. Morris visited Rome in the early 1900s, he returned wanting to adapt the Pantheon's design for a new banking hall. Curiously, he turned to Philadelphia architects Frank Furness and Allen Evans. Furness had designed many of the city's banks, but his high-style Victorian buildings in brick and terra cotta were elaborate and ornate -- not the sort of thing Morris envisioned for his simple, elegant Pantheon.
Not surprisingly, Morris was unhappy with Furness' initial plans and called in the New York firm McKim, Mead and White, which had introduced the neo-classical style to America in 1893 at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago.
Stanford White collaborated with Evans and produced an awe-inspiring building with white marble walls and fluted Ionic columns, and a free-standing dome 88 feet in diameter, with a skylit oculus at the center. The dome is constructed of marble tiles, using the self-supporting technique developed by Rafael Gustavino (seen here in the portico of Pittsburgh's City-County Building).
It must have been one of White's last projects; he was shot June 25, 1906, by Pittsburgher Harry K. Thaw, still enraged over wife Evelyn Nesbit's premarital affair with the high-living architect.
When the bank opened, one editorial writer commented that "all towering structures around are made to look cheap and flimsy by contrast."
But not for long; in 1923, McKim, Mead and White followed with a neo-classical tower in white marble, right next door. Seven years later, more floors were added. It is this 30-story tower that will house the hotel, which will have 330 rooms, including 37 suites.
The Dome Building, housing the hotel lobby, check-in area and two restaurants, will make a grand first impression. No partitions will be erected; the interior spaces, designed by the Hillier Group, will be free-flowing.
Did Ritz-Carlton ever consider putting the Dome Building to more efficient use, perhaps by filling it in with a few more hotel floors?
"To gut that would be to take away a piece of architecture that is important to the city and could never be replaced," said Ritz-Carlton spokesman Wendy Reisman. "People have a history here with our buildings," she said. "It's there, and it's gorgeous. Why wouldn't you want to maintain something like that?"
In fact, she said, "historic bank buildings seem to be the place to be in the city," with Loew's making a hotel out of the Philadelphia Savings Fund Society building, a Moderne high-rise of 1932 (by George Howe and William Lescaze) that is regarded as the city's best 20th-century building.
For Mellon, which sold its buildings in December, the move was part of the bank's ongoing reconfiguration and modernization of its local offices, in which more and more branches are opening in supermarkets and older, larger, less efficient buildings are being let go.
"We also wanted to support efforts to develop the Avenue of the Arts," said Mellon's Philadelphia spokesman, Jim Dever, who would not disclose the sale price.
The Ritz-Carlton buildings are located at the corner of Chestnut and Broad streets, a half-block from City Hall and in the heart of the Avenue of the Arts cultural district.
An independent non-profit organization, Avenue of the Arts, Inc., was created in 1993 to coordinate and support cultural and related development along Broad Street. Over the past six years, it has worked with the state, city, corporate and foundation communities and cultural organizations to turn Broad Street into a premier cultural destination.
A prime attraction will be the Regional Performing Arts Center, with a barrel-arched glass roof spanning a city block. Opening in the fall of 2001, it promises to be a spectacular building housing the city's primary orchestra, opera and dance groups in three venues -- a total of about 6,000 seats. Its architect is Rafael Vinoly, designer of Pittsburgh's coming convention center.
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