The City Bank of Wheeling, W.VA.

My second post to feature the Richardsonian Romanesque style of architecture will describe what used to be the City Bank of Wheeling.  The Wheeling Daily Intelligencer described its grand opening on November 11, 1891 as an event climaxed by the preceding weeks of bustling workers and onlookers...

"...crowds have congregated every day, busily engaged in watching the interesting work of elevating the immense pieces of granite used in the extremely handsome front of the new City Bank building. These varied from eleven tons down to a small block weighing but a few hundred pounds"

Built by Messrs. Renhalter & Co., in their construction the company used "gray granite from the quarries of Maine."  The ground floor is set off by pillars of polished Johnsbury granite, and the top of the structure is ornamented with Spanish tiles, and the very top is decorated with a fleur-de-lis.  Traslated from French, "fleur-de-lis" means the design of either a lilly or iris.  This ornament helped make it one of the tallest buildings in the state of West Virginia, rising 125 from the sidewalk to the fleur-de-lis.

The interior was just as elegant.  A banking room on the first floor was finished in hard wood, while the main entrance was fitted with "large swinging doors, ornamented with antique bronze and trimmings of the very latest style of art hardware."  The upper floors were finished with marble wainscoting.  Complete with the latest technology, a Otis hydraulic elevator was used to reach the upper floors which included 26 rooms that were used for office space.  All were said to have been finished in Georgia pine.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="477" caption="Advertisment for the City Bank of Wheeling. Dates from around 1915."][/caption]

Lavatories, or restrooms were included on each floor, each complete with cold and hot water.  Rather uniquely, the water was gathered from an artesian well beneath the building.  What makes an artesian well unique is that no pumping is required.  The water gathers pressure from the rock where it's stored (which absorbs the water from its original source), and the water actually flows up instead of down when the water finds an outlet.

Said to be composed of fire proof material, the bank was outfitted with Bostwick fire proof steel laths from a Wheeling steel manufacturer (the first building ever to do so), and the joist of the building are "very heavy and far apart, which makes the best of fire-proofs, in spite of all the devices so loudly praised in the East."

As the National Bank of West Virginia, the City Bank of Wheeling would undergo major changes as the city and its role in the economy changed.  What a treat it would be if the building was still used as a bank, but instead it is now commonly referred to as the Professional Building, and has been used partly used as a doctors office.

Last year, the Friends of Wheeling toured this building, and I invite you to view some photographs from that tour which provides a sample of the buildings interior (like the Otis Elevator).  The original cost of the building was $80,000.  Today it's currently for sale and can be purchased for $250,0o0.  For more history and more photographs, check out http://www.wheelingwvinvestmentproperty.com/index.html.  Use the link to the left to navigate towards the pictures, history, floor plan, etc.  When you view the photographs, you can view photographs from each floor of the building.