The Federal-American Bank is a four-story, approximately 60 feet high, structure built of reinforced concrete; there is a small ell which extends to the alley at the rear of the property. The Federal-American Bank illustrates the Classical Revival style and incorporates some design principles from the Baroque tradition. The street facades are faced with ashlar limestone; party walls are beige brick. Both street facades are symmetrical and have five bays, the principal facade faces 14th Street. The ground floor was originally treated as a monumental base with a show window in each bay; a continuous metal and glass storefront has replaced the show windows. The second and third stories are unified by giant Orders, and the fourth story, which is lit solely by skylights, features a full entablature and a parapet wall...
The Federal-American National Bank stands among a group of bank buildings forming Washington's financial district in the vicinity of the U.S. Treasury Department. It is an excellent example of early-twentieth-century Classical Revival bank architecture, designed by the nationally prominent bank and skyscraper architect Alfred C. Bossom, in association with J.H. de Sibour, the distinguished Washington architect who was among the city's leading proponents of Beaux-Arts principles. It is the only building designed by Bossom in Washington, and exemplifies many of the best characteristics of the forty banks he designed around the country between 1912 and 1926.
The building epitomizes the striving of a 1920s financial institution to express its financial prowess through a distinctive building. It also illustrates the dangerous tendency, typical of the period, for some banks to over-invest in lavish building campaigns, to the detriment of their financial stability. The building's subsequent history as the main office of a newly constituted Depression-era bank, the Hamilton National Bank, and a much larger financial institution, the National Bank of Washington, demonstrates its sustained appeal as a banking headquarters.
The building's design incorporates a number of innovative features, on the interior and exterior, that were unique in Washington banks. Raising the banking room to the second floor helped separate it from the noise and congestion of the street, while simultaneously freeing the ground floor for shops at street level. The two uses were congruous with this neighborhoods roles as a financial and shopping district.
The bank building constructed in 1925-26 has been vacant for decades. It has been purchased to be used as a museum and memorial to the Armenian Genocide however it has been tied up in litigation for over a decade.