First National Building - Detroit, MI - Satellite Imagery Oddities on Waymarking.com

Steel-frame twenty-four-story building faced in limestone (1920-22)- Albert Kahn, Inc., architect. The building's plan is shaped to fit in a contorted site that zigzags through the middle of its block, emerging on Congress' north side at the Bates intersection behind the Vinton Building. The facades fronting on Woodward and Cadillac Square at the building's north end are sheathed in gray granite at the street-level base and in limestone above, while other facades are finished in buffbrick. The three facades facing Woodward and Cadillac Square display massive Cminthian porticos in antis rising from above the street level up to the fifth-floor level- the porticos on the Cadillac Square and comer Woodward elevations fronting an arched-ceiling banking room (now under renovation). Above the porticos paired windows rise in vertical banks between broad and shallow piers up to a three-story high zone where, below a final story, metal panels replace the limestone spandrels. At the twenty-fow-th (attic) floor, the window pairs are separated by decorative details, and there are cartouches marking the ends of each fac;ade. An overscaled classical cornice with modillions and an acroteria band along the roofline have been removed. A portion of the building is constructed over a parking garage that faces Bates Street and East Congress Street. Above the parking garage is office space. The roof is flat. The first floor of the building contains retail store space, while the upper stories were designed for a bank tenant as well as commercial offices.

The First National Bank was established in 1863, shortly after the 1862 passage of the National Banking Act. A Second National Bank, founded shortly after First, with leading Detroit businessmen such as Christian H. Buhl, Eber Brock Ward, and James F. Joy as directors, merged with First National in 1914 as the First and Old Detroit National Bank. The bank occupied its new quarters in February 1922, then shortening its name to First National Bank. The bank went into receivership in 1933.-NRHP Nomination Form

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