The Savings Bank Building is seen around the 1920s. Notice the wrought iron balconies that have since been removed. (Photo courtesy of the Marquette Regional History Center)

MARQUETTE — Marquette is fortunate that two of our prominent bank buildings from the last century are still standing across the street from each other at the corner of Washington and Front streets. Both are currently facing possible changes, but in both cases, the owners have stated they will maintain the historic nature of these buildings.

The older of the two buildings is the Savings Bank Building with its iconic clock tower. The Marquette County Savings Bank was established in 1890 by Nathan Kaufman and other local businessmen. Although Peter White’s First National Bank had been in Marquette for many years, and had a fine sandstone building on the corner of Spring and Front streets, it was primarily oriented toward commercial enterprises. The new savings bank, originally housed in the Manhard Block at 113 S. Front St. (now the home of Elizabeth’s Chophouse) was oriented more toward the men and women who worked in those enterprises, accepting deposits as low as one dollar and servicing real estate loans.

It would be an understatement to say that the building lot for the bank’s new home on the southeast corner of Front and Washington presented a number of challenges. In addition to the steep hill on Washington Street, there was also a very active (think noisy and dirty) railroad running immediately along the Jackson Cut on the south side of the lot. But the architects, the Duluth firm of Barber and Barber, with a Marquette office conveniently across the street in the Harlow Block, met both handily.

Although the bank had originally hoped for a three or four story building, with the bank on the first floor and rented offices above, the architects were able to design the building so that the Front Street side has five stories above street level, but there are six stories on the Washington Street side and seven on the south, which was then the railroad side. In addition, on the Front Street side, the basement was only seven steps down from the street and all the basement rooms facing Washington Street (which was where the safety deposit boxes were located) had full-length windows.

The solution to the railroad problem was perhaps even more ingenious. The architects placed the hall toward the south side of the building, leaving the space closest to the tracks for elevators, restrooms, storage rooms and the stairway and ventilating shafts.

There were numerous other practical details to the building, designed to appeal to prospective tenants. Every office suite had its own bathroom and was piped for gas and oxygen, as well as already wired for electricity and telephone. Each had its own safe. The office spaces were already painted, so that tenants could move in immediately. The building even had its own power plant to assure the elevators could operate during a power failure.

Every effort was also made to make the building as fireproof as possible. The builders pointed out that by locating the building where it was, there were no other buildings adjacent to it, which, in addition to assuring good light and ventilation, also provided a measure of safety from fire. The construction was all iron, steel, brick, stone, and concrete and though the floors were maple, they were laid on concrete.

The Mining Journal described the exterior architecture as “modern American with Gothic feeling.” The Rock River sandstone, the red granite pillars, the carved stone panels between the bay windows and the wrought iron balconies (no longer present) all made for a dramatic presentation.

The most dramatic element, of course, was, and is, the three-sided lighted clock tower, originally designed to be visible not only up and down Front and Washington Streets, but also from the harbor. It was at that time the only town clock in the Upper Peninsula. The clock tower also included a huge bell, which rang out the hour until 1979, when a pin on the mechanism was broken.

The building opened on Feb. 8, 1892, the morning after the grand opening of the new Marquette Opera House. Although the Opera House was destroyed by fire in 1938, we are fortunate to still have the Savings Bank Building, now listed on the National Register of Historic Places, still standing as an iconic symbol of Marquette.