Raleigh Banking and Trust Company Building - Raleigh, NC
N 35° 46.694 W 078° 38.377
17S E 713348 N 3961921
The Raleigh Banking and Trust Company Building, also known as the Raleigh Building, is one of the downtown area's remaining early-twentieth-century skyscrapers. The building now houses commercial uses at the ground floor and office space above.
Waymark Code: WMAHMG
Location: North Carolina, United States
Date Posted: 01/17/2011
Views: 6
"The eleven-story Raleigh Building is a steel-framed, masonry-clad skyscraper with altered storefronts at the ground floor. The building fronts on Fayetteville Street and has a secondary facade along the south side of Hargett Street. These two elevations are finished identically, while the south and west elevations have no architectural elaboration. At the north and east elevations, above the typical late-twentieth-century plate-glass and stucco of the ground-floor pharmacy, the upper shaft of the building is a good example of the Chicago-Style skyscrapers built in the early twentieth century, featuring large windows framed by buff-colored brick spandrels in stretcher bond and continuous pilasters that emphasize the height of the building. The second and third stories feature some Streamline Moderne detailing rendered in brick at the pilasters, but detailing in the uppermost stories is more along classical lines, including a terra cotta beltcourse between the ninth and tenth stories and an elaborate terra cotta cornice with medallions and rosettes, egg and dart molding, modillion blocks, and anthemion cresting.
This eleven-story bank building was erected in 1913 as a three-story Neoclassical bank designed by architect Philip Thornton Mayre. The three-story structure was erected by the Raleigh Banking and Trust Company, replacing an earlier Italianate building. In 1928-1929, the bank added eight stories, following a design by the architectural and engineering firm H. A. Underwood Company. In 1935-1936, Underwood remodeled the building to create a streamlined look at the original three stories. Storefronts have been altered at least twice since then, in 1961 and in the mid 1980s, and the windows were replaced throughout the building in 1978. The bank failed in 1932 and Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company purchased it and hired Underwood to remodel the building to accommodate ground-floor retail space. Since then, the building has continued to house retail at the ground level and offices in the ten stories above."
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The Raleigh Banking and Trust Company Building was added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places in 1993.