Geology & Botany of the Sullivan Jewel Boxes, Part 7: Locator Shot | Farmers & Merchants Union Bank, Columbus, Wisconsin, USA (1919)
Looking southwestward at the bank's facade (northeastern elevation). Supposedly it was in this spot that architect Louis Sullivan sat on the curb and chain-smoked cigarettes while he sketched this building's design.
This shot gives at least a little bit of neighborhood context. But note that the black bank addition at left was subsequently replaced by a similarly inconsequential mass faced in buff-colored brick.
Of the eight Sullivan jewel-box structures that grace small Midwestern communities, I have visited seven. And on entering each one of them I've been met by friendly people—bank officers, Chamber of Commerce officials, and so forth—who have been only too happy to let me wander about, photograph interesting details, and examine original blueprints stored in their archives. They've patiently answered my questions and amiably chatted about everything from their site's construction history to how the local weather has been treating the current corn and soybean crop. All that, even though I had no intention of opening a checking account or starting up my own business in town. Try finding that welcoming attitude in suburbia or the big city.
The fact is that these folks are proud of their towns, and especially proud that their towns have one of Sullivan's miniature masterpieces. Der lieber Meister has put them on the map. And that's especially true, I sense, in Columbus.
There, over the years, the bank management has kindly let me parade several tour groups through the interior, and up onto the mezzanine to take in the view. These tours were primarily about botany and geology al fresco, but this stop was often deemed the participants' favorite of the entire itinerary.
So far I've been able to source the two main building materials for the Farmers & Merchants Union Bank, but a major mystery remains. The one stone element, the dark green panel on which the name is emblazoned, was inadequately described by early Sullivan biographer Hugh Morrison as "a polished slab of verde antique marble." That jumble of Italian, French, and English terms is Architectural-Historian-Speak for the exotic metamorphic rock serpentinite, or its brecciated variant, ophicalcite.
These striking stone varieties began as the upper-mantle constituent dunite, an ultramafic igneous rock that was later altered by contact with water and bulldozed from a subduction zone or ocean basin onto a continental margin. The problem is that stone closely resembling the one shown here has been quarried in Vermont, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Georgia, the French Maritime Alps, northern Italy, Tuscany, and the Greek Aegean. And no doubt elsewhere as well.
I'd like to think that the bank's serpentinite is the variety produced in the Green Mountain State town of Rochester (Vermont Serpentinite, marketed as "Vermont Verde Antique"). But so far I have no provenance. My second guess would be one of three ophicalcites that are its southern-European look-alikes: the Maurin, the Aosta Valley, and the Polcevera. All of these were widely employed in early-twentieth-century American architecture.
Fortunately, the striking, spotted-pale-green terra-cotta is well documented; it was fabricated by the American Terra Cotta Company based in McHenry County, Illinois. Its basic source clay came from Lemont Formation glacial till, of late-Pleistocene age, mined on site. And English ball clays, probably from Cornwall, were used in the formulation of the glaze.
While the final and most extensive material is not so well sourced, I do have one reliable reference that avers it's Crawfordsville Brick. Already discussed in my posts on the Purdue National Bank, it was made in Crawfordsville, Indiana from Mississippian-subperiod (Lower Carboniferous) shale or siltstone of the Borden Group.
Photos to follow in this set will show these materials at closer range and in greater detail.
The other photos and descriptions of this series can be found in my Geology & Botany of the Sullivan Jewel Boxes album.
Geology & Botany of the Sullivan Jewel Boxes, Part 7: Locator Shot | Farmers & Merchants Union Bank, Columbus, Wisconsin, USA (1919)
Looking southwestward at the bank's facade (northeastern elevation). Supposedly it was in this spot that architect Louis Sullivan sat on the curb and chain-smoked cigarettes while he sketched this building's design.
This shot gives at least a little bit of neighborhood context. But note that the black bank addition at left was subsequently replaced by a similarly inconsequential mass faced in buff-colored brick.
Of the eight Sullivan jewel-box structures that grace small Midwestern communities, I have visited seven. And on entering each one of them I've been met by friendly people—bank officers, Chamber of Commerce officials, and so forth—who have been only too happy to let me wander about, photograph interesting details, and examine original blueprints stored in their archives. They've patiently answered my questions and amiably chatted about everything from their site's construction history to how the local weather has been treating the current corn and soybean crop. All that, even though I had no intention of opening a checking account or starting up my own business in town. Try finding that welcoming attitude in suburbia or the big city.
The fact is that these folks are proud of their towns, and especially proud that their towns have one of Sullivan's miniature masterpieces. Der lieber Meister has put them on the map. And that's especially true, I sense, in Columbus.
There, over the years, the bank management has kindly let me parade several tour groups through the interior, and up onto the mezzanine to take in the view. These tours were primarily about botany and geology al fresco, but this stop was often deemed the participants' favorite of the entire itinerary.
So far I've been able to source the two main building materials for the Farmers & Merchants Union Bank, but a major mystery remains. The one stone element, the dark green panel on which the name is emblazoned, was inadequately described by early Sullivan biographer Hugh Morrison as "a polished slab of verde antique marble." That jumble of Italian, French, and English terms is Architectural-Historian-Speak for the exotic metamorphic rock serpentinite, or its brecciated variant, ophicalcite.
These striking stone varieties began as the upper-mantle constituent dunite, an ultramafic igneous rock that was later altered by contact with water and bulldozed from a subduction zone or ocean basin onto a continental margin. The problem is that stone closely resembling the one shown here has been quarried in Vermont, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Georgia, the French Maritime Alps, northern Italy, Tuscany, and the Greek Aegean. And no doubt elsewhere as well.
I'd like to think that the bank's serpentinite is the variety produced in the Green Mountain State town of Rochester (Vermont Serpentinite, marketed as "Vermont Verde Antique"). But so far I have no provenance. My second guess would be one of three ophicalcites that are its southern-European look-alikes: the Maurin, the Aosta Valley, and the Polcevera. All of these were widely employed in early-twentieth-century American architecture.
Fortunately, the striking, spotted-pale-green terra-cotta is well documented; it was fabricated by the American Terra Cotta Company based in McHenry County, Illinois. Its basic source clay came from Lemont Formation glacial till, of late-Pleistocene age, mined on site. And English ball clays, probably from Cornwall, were used in the formulation of the glaze.
While the final and most extensive material is not so well sourced, I do have one reliable reference that avers it's Crawfordsville Brick. Already discussed in my posts on the Purdue National Bank, it was made in Crawfordsville, Indiana from Mississippian-subperiod (Lower Carboniferous) shale or siltstone of the Borden Group.
Photos to follow in this set will show these materials at closer range and in greater detail.
The other photos and descriptions of this series can be found in my Geology & Botany of the Sullivan Jewel Boxes album.