In the 1890s, Henry Hobson Richardson's successor firm Shepley Rutan & Coolidge, Architects (SRC) received two important commissions in New Orleans. Both projects were published in the May 1896 The American Architect & Building News. Both buildings were constructed in the Central Business District, one at 1030 Canal Street (top image); the other at 221-223 Baronne Street (bottom image). The first to be completed was for the New South Building & Loan Association, erected in 1895 and the second was the Pickwick Club House, completed in 1896. (1)

The Heliotype Printing Company of Boston produced the journal images above, with the hand-colored collotype only available in the international and imperial editions.

Images above:

Top: Shepley, Rutan & Collidge, Architects. Pickwick Club-House, 1030 Canal Street, New Orleans, LA. 1896. Collotype. The American Architect & Building News (30 May 1896).

Bottom: Shepley, Rutan & Collidge, Architects. New South Building & Loan Association, 221-223 Baronne Street, New Orleans, LA. 1895. Hand-colored collotype. The American Architect & Building News (30 May 1896).

Both Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

(1) Interior plastering for the Pickwick Club-House was not completed until 1897, as club members wanted to allow the building to settle for one year to prevent the formation of wall cracks.

Alexandria's Rapides Bank & Trust Company (RBTC), located at 400 Murray Street, was designed by the Bank Building & Equipment Corporation (1954). The company specialized in modernist design-build services, and had a significant affect on banking in both North and South America. In 1969, RBTC used its new bank as a gallery space, hosting an important Rodin exhibition that featured B. Gerald Cantor's collection now housed at Stanford University's Cantor Arts Center.

The Alexandria building is still standing and serves as a branch of Chase Bank. Its predecessor, the Old Rapides Bank & Trust Company building (1898), has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1980.

The Bank Building & Equipment Company's lead architect Wenceslao A. Sarmiento also designed modernist branches of Hibernia Bank in Gentilly (1956) and Mid-City (1955).  Click here for photos and more information.

Image above: Detail, Robert H. Bolton, letter to Louisiana Landmarks Society, 25 August 1971, Louisiana Landmarks Society Records, Folder 556, Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

We recently came across an old check from the People's Bank of New Orleans that features a wood engraved image of the bank building formerly located at 207 Decatur Street/507 Iberville Street in the Second Municipal District. Opened in August 1877, the structure served the bank's purposes until it relocated to Thomas Sully's Morris Building in the early twentieth century.

The structure was designed by a succession of architect-surveyors, first by Jules A. D'Hemecourt (†1880) and then finished by Stephen J. Turpin. Motherwell M. Bell served as the contractor, and Harry H. Dressel (†1905), the scenic artist who had his studio on Iberville (then Customhouse), painted the interior fresco panels that included personifications of Industry and Commerce, and a depiction of the Steamboat Natchez.(1)

(1)"The People's Bank." The Daily Picayune (5 August 1877) p. 1.

Images above: T. Fitzwilliam & Co., printers. Peoples Bank of New Orleans checks, c. 1900-1907. Full view and detail of People's Bank building located at 207 Decatur Street. Guy Seghers Office Records, "7th District, Square 179 (Carrollton 66-A)," Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

In the summer of 1902, Chicago architect and urban planner Daniel Hudson Burnham (1846-1912) visited New Orleans, along with his mechanical engineer, Charles Wilkes. The two registered at the St. Charles Hotel while they met with representatives of the Hibernia Trust & Banking Company to discuss plans for a new skyscraper to be located on the corner of Carondelet and Gravier Streets. The structure was intended to rise in tandem with a 12-story addition to the St. Charles Hotel so that a common wall could be created.

In 1955, Duplex Electric Company patented a Curb Teller designed by inventor Clarence D. Ellithorpe. The company marketed the product to urban banks that did not have adequate space to accommodate a drive-up window. Ellithorpe's CT required a bank employee be lodged in a subterranean chamber (diagram above).

The customer, described in company brochures as the "autoist," would push a button to signal the teller, who could see the customer above via a bullet-proof glass protected periscope. The teller would then send a miniature elevator up the shaft to collect transaction documents, which could then be sent down to the teller.

Images above: Duplex Electric Company. "Curb Tellers" Brochure. New York: n.d. Architectural Trade Catalogs Collection, Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collection Division, Tulane University Libraries.