Merchants' National Bank
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Merchants' National Bank
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Merchants' National Bank
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| Location | Northwest corner of 4th Avenue and Broad Street, Grinnell, Iowa |
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| Coordinates | 41°44′39.16″N 92°43′32.88″W / 41.7442111°N 92.7258000°WCoordinates: 41°44′39.16″N 92°43′32.88″W / 41.7442111°N 92.7258000°W |
| Built | 1914 |
| Architect | Louis Sullivan; Stewart-Robison-Laffan |
| Architectural style | Late 19th And Early 20th Century American Movements, Other |
| Part of | Grinnell Historic Commercial District (#91000384) |
| NRHP Reference # | 76000804 |
| Significant dates | |
| Added to NRHP | January 7, 1976 |
| Designated CP | January 7, 1976 |
The Merchants' National Bank (1914) building is a historic commercial building located at 833 Fourth Avenue in Grinnell, Iowa. It is one of a series of small banks designed by Louis Sullivan in the Midwest between 1909 and 1919. All of the banks are built of brick and for this structure he employed various shades of brick, ranging in color from blue-black to golden brown, giving it an overall reddish brown appearance. It was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1976 for its architecture. In 1991 it was listed as a contributing property in the Grinnell Historic Commercial District.
Merchants' National Bank was built in 1914 and had its grand opening on January the first, in 1915, along with the Purdue State Bank in Indiana, also designed by Sullivan.
Structurally the building is a rectangular box, with a magnificent main facade and a windowed side facade.
Although this building is smaller than either his Owatonna or Cedar Rapids banks it appears just as monumental. This is due largely to the oversized cartouche that surrounds a circular window on the Fourth Street facade. Light is introduced into the interior by a series of stained glass windows that alternate with structural posts down the side of the building and through the colored glass skylight that comprises much of the ceiling.
While the bank housed in the structure, and its location, Grinnell Iowa, did not warrant national attention, yet the unveiling of a Louis Sullivan building was given national coverage in the architectural press of the day and the Merchants' Bank was thus featured in an eleven-page spread in The Western Architect's February 1916 edition.
As he did in his banks in Cedar Rapids and Sidney, Ohio, Sullivan used lions, or at least a grotesque, winged version of a lion, as figurative decoration. This creature is one of the very few figurative elements that can be found in the architect's designs. (The angels in his Transportation Building and the Bayard-Condict Building being other examples.)
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