New York City Structures: Citizen’s Savings Bank

Citizen’s Savings Bank
58 Bowery
Year built: 1922–1924
Architect: Clarence W. Brazer

NEW YORK—The Citizen’s Savings Bank at the corner of the Bowery and Canal and anchoring the Manhattan Bridge was recently given landmark status by the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission. The grand and handsome Beaux-Arts structure was constructed in the early 1920s at a time when banks were typically designed in classical architectural styles to convey a sense of stability.

Monumental in scale and style, it does indeed stand as an icon of banking security as well as a neighborhood landmark. Its tall arched windows and dome serve as a pleasing counterpoint to the horseshoe-shaped colonnade of the Carrere and Hastings designed Manhattan Bridge plaza, which was completed 13 years earlier. The bank opened at the site in 1862, first as a brownstone building. But as its deposits grew, in the early 1920s the bank commissioned architect Clarence Brazer to design a new home for the growing enterprise.

Built on the nearly square site, after the bank purchased adjoining lots for the expansion, the current building was constructed “under, around, and over the existing building,” so as not to disrupt daily transactions by local depositors, according to the Landmark Commission’s report.

The structure stands 110 feet tall and has an interior main banking room with 70-foot ceilings and massive arched windows that once allowed natural light to fill the public space. The building still serves as a bank but the tall, now opaque, windows no longer allow natural light into the space.

At the time it was built, the Third Avenue El train ran right past the front of the building, and Brazer wisely designed the bank to stand out from every vantage point. The heavy rusticated granite base at street level welcomed depositors into what must have seemed a formidable banking institution. The tall arched windows on each facade, as well as the stone sculptures provided by Charles Keck must have provided passengers on the elevated train pleasing sights as they passed by; and the peak of the 110-foot-tall dome might have given travelers across the Manhattan Bridge a familiar destination as they crossed over from Brooklyn.

The building’s facade, which faces east across the Bowery and toward the bridge, is decorated with Keck’s sculptures that were based on the bank’s original seal. On top of the entablature above the arched windows is a central grouping of a clock surrounded by a wreath and two figures: a Native American wearing a full feathered headdress to the south, and a bearded sailor to the north. Between the two figures and resting on top of the clock, which appears to be correct twice a day at 11:15, is an eagle with its wings fully spread. To the left and right of the central group are two beehive sculptures, a symbol of thrift that can be seen in other banks around the city built at that time; for example the beehive topped clock mounted on the side of the New York Savings Bank at the corner of 14th Street and Eighth Avenue, constructed in 1896–1897.

The interior of the building, which is still serving local citizens as a bank but now as a branch of the HSBC Bank, has a bright yellow ceiling, a center oculus that allows light in from the clerestory windows, and murals painted at top of the four corners around the words: “Success,” “Wisdom,” “Thrift,” and “Safety.”

Clarence W. Brazer (1899–1956) was born in Philadelphia and studied there at the Drexler Institute. After moving to New York Brazer worked in the office of Cass Gilbert where among other projects he worked on the U.S. Customs House, also a city landmark. Brazer died in his home in Flushing, Queens.