![]() ![]() The bank continued to grow through the mid 20th century. By the 1930s, Society for Savings was one of the four largest banks in Cleveland, with more than $100 million in deposits. Mather, the bank would become publicly regarded as a conservative and secure banking institution as it survived the turbulent Civil War years, four depressions, and countless financial panics. can be traced back to the opening of Society for Savings on Superior Street and what is now West 9th Street in 1849. Source: Cleveland Public Library Photograph Collection Trustee's Room, 1949 Cleveland's ties with Key Corp. Blending styles of Gothic, Romanesque, and Renaissance architecture, the exterior of this historic structure was designed to reflect the strength and security of Society for Savings Bank, which was fifty years old at the time. The ten-story red sandstone structure was designed by John Wellborn Root of the prestigious Chicago architectural firm Burnham and Root, and is considered by many to be the first modern skyscraper in Ohio. Images Society For Savings Centennial, 1949 The Society for Savings building, located on Public Square next to Key Tower, was built between 1889-1890 to provide office and business space for the rapidly expanding financial institution. The juxtaposition of Cleveland's first skyscraper with its tallest skyscraper makes Key Center a an object lesson in the city's downtown architectural development. In 1990, as the tower was rising, the bank cleaned the sandstone exterior and restored the banking lobby but otherwise modernized the upper floors except for the board room on the mezzanine level. When Cesar Pelli designed the Society Center (now Key Tower) building adjacent to the original Society building, he carried some of the older building's horizontal lines over into the new tower's design. Burnham returned a decade later to design the Group Plan, an expression of the City Beautiful movement that he popularized, and again ten years after that to design the May Company's new building on the south side of Public Square. Both buildings incorporated the same Romanesque style used in Chicago's Rookery Building and Cleveland's Society for Savings. ![]() Two years later, the firm added the Cuyahoga Building on the east side of Public Square (demolished in 1982 to build the Sohio/BP Building), which was Cleveland's first completely steel-frame skyscraper. The Western Reserve Building on Superior Avenue in the Warehouse District, built in 1891, used the same hybrid of masonry walls bolted to an inner steel skeleton. It was the first of several buildings by the Burnham & Root firm. The Society building was Cleveland's tallest until the New England (Guardian) Building on Euclid Avenue eclipsed it in 1896. Ornate, colorful wallpaper and murals by English illustrator William Crane depicting proverbs encouraging thrift and industry add to the grandeur. Its interior features a soaring banking hall flanked by arched windows and supported by dark varnished Corinthian columns beneath a coffered stained-glass skylight. The building's exterior includes interesting details such as a replica on the building's southwest corner of the arc lamps used in Charles Brush's lighting demonstration on Public Square in 1879. ![]() Behind its sandstone edifice of thick load-bearing masonry walls similar to those of Burnham's Monadnock Building in Chicago is an independently constructed steel frame for the center of the building that reflects the modern method of skyscraper building pioneered in the 1880s by William LeBaron Jenney of Chicago. The 152-foot-tall, ten-story bank building is generally regarded as Cleveland's first skyscraper, but its construction reflects a time of technological transition. Designed by John Wellborn Root of the famed Chicago architectural firm Burnham & Root, The Society for Savings Building combines Gothic and Romanesque styles rendered in red sandstone. The Society for Savings Building opened in 1890 on the north side of Public Square. ![]()
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