Queenswalk: The Old First National City Bank

The front page of the October 1, 1928 edition of the Queens Daily Star announced that Queens Plaza was well on its way to becoming the Times Square of the borough. At least that’s what A. J. Swensen, president of the Long Island City chapter of the Long Island Real Estate Board thought. He was enthusiastically touting the fact that this part of Queens had quickly developed from a purely industrial area to a center for banking and business.

As he spoke, workmen were building new underground subway lines. Trolleys, subways and el trains would all meet here, making Queens Plaza the new center of Queens. At the center of this transit activity would be the banks. At the time of this article, the new Chatham and Phenix Bank building was opening that day, the largest office building in Queens at that time. It was a large twelve story office building that would hold not only the bank on the ground floor, but offices already rented to lawyers, real estate companies and other business concerns.

Local officials and business leaders were celebrating for good reason. Chatham and Phenix Bank was joining several other banks in the area, and would soon be in the company of yet another one. That December, a new branch of the National City Bank opened with great fanfare, as well. Although it was nowhere as large as Chatham and Phenix, it was yet another sign that Queens Plaza had arrived. National City Bank was one of the oldest and most venerable banks in all of New York City.

Samuel Osgood was the first president of the new City Bank of New York, established in Manhattan in the year 1812. Founded the same year the young America shook off the grasp of England for the second time, City Bank of New York grew rapidly throughout the 19th century. In 1865 they officially became the Federal National City Bank of New York. Between 1897 and 1931, the bank swallowed up several smaller Manhattan and Brooklyn banks, merging with them, growing and expanding their territory and assets. By the end of the 1920s, National City Bank began building new branches in growing areas of the city.

Many of these new branches were designed by the same architectural firm – Walker & Gillette. A. Stewart Walker and Leon N. Gillette became one of Manhattan’s busiest firms. They were very talented, and well connected, which never hurt anyone. Walker was a Harvard man, a native of Jersey City. His partner, Leon Gillette, was from Maiden, MA, and had been educated at the University of Pennsylvania. He had gone on to study at the famed E’cole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, between 1901 and 1903, and came home to work for Warren & Wetmore, one of the city’s most prolific and important white shoe Beaux-Arts firms.

The two men met and formed a partnership in 1906. They were soon quite successful designing the bread and butter of any upscale NYC firm; they got handsome commissions for Manhattan townhouses and suburban mansions. Between 1906 and 1920, they built a number of them, including many suburban mansions in the exclusive Tuxedo Park gated development in Orange County. A. Stewart Walker’s father-in-law was Grenville Kane, a banker, and influential member of the Tuxedo Park community. He was a great help in getting work for his son-in-law and for his daughter, Sybil, who was an interior decorator who often worked with her husband’s firm.

Fortunately, Walker & Gillette were more than up for the task. They designed several homes in Tuxedo Park, as well as additions and renovations, and also designed mansions on Long Island for clients with names like Pulitzer, Poor (of Standard & Poor), Brokaw and Coe. When the firm decided to concentrate on commercial architecture, many of these clients also turned to them for their business needs.

The firm transitioned into commercial ventures after 1921. They were hugely successful, and designed buildings in Manhattan and other cities that are landmarks today. The latter part of the 1920s saw architecture moving into the Art Deco period. The firm was quite adept at a very classy form of Deco. That includes the Fuller Building on Madison and 57th Street, built in 1929.Their larger office buildings, like the Fuller, had the classic setbacks that characterize Deco skyscrapers, but they could also be quite sleek and bold in smaller buildings such as bank branches.

Walker & Gillette also were able to get a lucrative contract designing banks for National City Bank. The bank had expanded out into other cities, and in addition to several branches in NY, Walker & Gillette designed branches outside of the city, including one in Havana, Cuba. Their most important and iconic National City Bank branch is on Broadway and Canal Street, in Manhattan. It was eye catching when it was built, a sleek and modern limestone structure with bold lettering and a very Deco pair of eagles holding a shield, which formed a formidable advertising presence above the two story entrance.

I used to bank here, and I remember the interior as a soaring two story space that you had to walk up a flight of stairs to access. The bank had offices above on the top floor, and a vault and safe deposit boxes in the lower level. The bank closed around the turn of the 21st century. It was a Pay Less shoe store after that, and now seems to be getting ready for a new incarnation. Fortunately, it is landmarked, a part of the Tribeca East Historic District. It’s really a great building.

That pair of eagles surrounding a round boss was repeated in the firm’s much smaller branch designed for Queens Plaza. The Daily Star announced on December 21, 1928 that the new bank was opening ahead of schedule. The article described the building, mentioning that the façade was modeled after the Walker & Gillette’s Canal Street branch design. The new bank replaced an older building housing the Condax Confectionary store. The architects used the old side walls, enclosed them in another layer of brick, built the rest of the building, and stuccoed over the whole thing. This created walls over a foot thick, insuring depositors that their money was safe.

Walker & Gillette also had to compensate for the building’s location at a busy intersection. They expanded the size of the original building, and wrapped it around the corner. The basic design of the building was very much like the Canal St. branch. There were offices on the top floor, with the bank below. The vault and safe deposit boxes were in the lower level, and the customer banking took place on the main floor. There were five grilled bank cages with tellers, and the article noted that all of the banking activities that could take place at the bank’s main headquarters in the Wall St. area were available here.

A large advertisement for the bank accompanied this article, giving us a rare look at what the branch looked like in 1928. This was one of the last banks to open in Queens Plaza. Unfortunately, it would not last very long. The bank was quite active up until after World War II. The city even opened an office to aid women who were going to work in factories to aid the war effort. The new office, called the Mayor’s Committee on Wartime Care of Children, was on the second floor of the bank. The office gave them advice on factory work and day care facilities.

In 1946, a fire broke out in the branch. Passers-by noticed thick smoke coming out of the front of the bank the night of January 17th. A fire had started in the basement, and by the time the fire department arrived, it was spreading to the main floor. Two firemen were hospitalized while fighting the blaze. The basement of the bank was completely destroyed, and the fire had come up through the floor, necessitating ripping most of that up too. All of the office furniture on the first floor was also destroyed. The vault and safety deposit boxes were not damaged.

It’s not clear, but it doesn’t look as if the bank came back after that, except to close up. In 1951, the building was home to the Boys Club of Queens. It is not clear if they only had the second floor, which seems likely. In 1952, this address was the Factory Shoe Outlet, selling bargain shoes. They had several large ads in the local papers. Ironically, the Manhattan branch of the bank also became a bargain shoe store, only that happened some sixty years after the Queens branch.

From that time, the bank building has had many different owners and functions. The area around it also changed dramatically, and was no longer a swanky financial district. The blog One More Folded Sunset noticed the building, and chronicled its more recent history thusly:

“More recently the building has housed an insurance business (see the Peter Demetriou sign on a side wall), Dodger Limousine Corps, the Juan Pananga Discotheque, the Mercurio 2000 Salsa Club (see the sign at the front), something intriguing called Hopply and Pupy), Roka Studios, and the services of Hinode (advertised in a ’97 NY Magazine classified under Role Play). A James P. Demetriou, at this address, also had a number of registered trademarks for a variety of products. Those for frozen pizza, bread, and mink coats (Shadow Mist Mink, Blue Mist Mink, Smoke Mist Mink, Dawn Mist Mink ) are dead, but Just Ask “personal concierge” services is still active, and seems to be a going concern in Florida. 29-14 is currently available, and given the adjacent land around it, one fears for its future.”

The writer is right. Today, the building is a shade of its former grand self, and if large development comes to this area, it will only be a passing memory. Of course, First National City bank continued to grow, and today is Citibank, the second largest bank in the world. This branch, so widely hailed in Queens when it opened, has been long forgotten. It is located at 29-14 Northern Boulevard, aka Queens Plaza East.

GMAP

(Photograph: Google Maps)