The building is very successful, and the more successful because the designer has shirked nothing and blinked nothing, but out of this nettle, commercial demands, has plucked this flower, commercial architecture. The same praise of an entire relevancy to its purpose belongs to the Bank of Minnesota, a well-proportioned and well-divided piece of masonry, in spite of more effort at variety in outline, and of somewhat more of fantasy in detail. The former is manifested in the treatment of the roof, in which the gables of the upper story are relieved against a low mansard; and the latter in the design of these gables and of the rich and effective entrance. The problem, as one of composition, is very much simplified here, since the building is but of six stories, and the dilemma of monotony or miscellany, which so awfully confronts the designers of ten and twelve story buildings, does not present itself. The two lower stories, though quite differently detailed, are here grouped into an architectural basement, the grouping being emphasized in the main front by the extension of the entrance through both. The superstructure is of three stories, quite identical and very plain in treatment, and above is the lighter and more open fenestration of the gabled attic.
BANK OF MINNESOTA, ST. PAUL.
Wilcox & Johnson, Architects.
Of far more extent and pretension than this, being
TOP OF NEW YORK LIFE INSURANCE BUILDING, ST. PAUL.
Babb, Cook, & Willard, Architects.