Lot 196
White Stanford 1853 - 1906 Stanford White discusses the Washington Arch, and Bowery Bank with MacMonnies
Two typed pages on stationary stock addressed to Frederick William MacMonnies, on the firm's letterhead of "McKim, Mead & White". Dated "April 23, 1894", and signed by Stanford White as "White". 8" x 10.5". Expected folds, faint handling marks, ink smudging to the signature which ghosted onto the blank verso of the first page. Small pencil notes front and verso and inked corrections.
Whites letter to MacMonnies, the best known expatriate American sculptor of the Beaux-Arts school, acknowledges receipt of his letters about the Washington Arch, (a recently completed project designed by McKim, Mead and White), but mostly focuses on the creation of The Bowery Bank Pediment. Like other new bank buildings following the Financial Panic of 1893, the Bowery Bank building was intended to instill confidence in those who would entrust their savings here. The classical, sturdy limestone structure exuded the strength and stability that wary investors found reassuring. McKim, Mead & White were commissioned to architect the building. Upon completion in 1895, the all-in cost of construction was $570,421.57 and succeeded in the promise that the building would "be one of the handsomest in the country as well as one of the largest wholly devoted to banking purposes." McKim, Mead & White's work applied the principles of Beaux-Arts architecture, the adoption of the classical Greek and Roman stylistic vocabulary as filtered through the Parisian Ecole des Beaux-Arts, and the related City Beautiful Movement after 1893 or so. Its vision was to clean up the visual confusion of American cities and imbue them with a sense of order and formality during America's Gilded Age. The Bowery Bank's architecture, one of the first great Classical Revival bank buildings in the United States, borrowed loosely from the design of the Bank of England in London, the architects also drew inspiration from the monumental white marble edifices that graced Chicago's World's Columbian Exposition of a year earlier. The firm created a Roman temple to banking that wrapped around the existing building at Bowery and Grand Street. The L-shaped structure had a majestic two-story portico on Grand Street with four colossal Corinthian columns supporting a classical pediment. Frederick MacMonnies sculpted two reclining figures representing Time with an hour glass and scythe, and Industry that rested against an enormous clock within the pediment.
White's letter to MacMonnies, who sculpted the columns and pediments of the Bowery Bank, discusses the quality of the stone used, along with thoughts on the aesthetic design. "The stone is of very much the same hardness and texture as the second quality of Carrara marble they use for outdoor monuments", "I would be all means change nothing but the heads for the south spandrils. You might put wreathes of something on their heads to give them an entirely different appearance, and tie laurel around their waists, or something of that kind, but by all means, do as little work as is necessary..."
A fascinating correspondence between architect and artist during a significant period of architectural design. Both men dominated the architectural scene in New York at the time. The exterior of the original Bowery Bank building was designated a New York City Landmark in 1966, and the interior in 1994, and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1980.
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