Abandoned Bank Building in South Carolina

People's National Bank - Franklin's Clothing Store, Rock Hill South Carolina

Date added: July 30, 2023 Categories:

Facade (south elevation), from Main Street (1998)

The Peoples Bank and Trust Company was chartered in Rock Hill by the State of South Carolina on 15^th February 1906, with capital stock of $30,000. A year later the bank weathered the national Panic of 1907. Peoples received its national bank charter and status in May 1909. Because national banking laws did not allow banks to engage in real estate and insurance, the bank was split into two separate institutions, the Peoples National Bank and the Peoples Trust Company. At this time the bank's capital stock was increased to $100,000.

On 10^th June 1910, the two institutions moved into the newly-completed Peoples National Bank Building. By the end of World War I Peoples National Bank was the largest commercial bank in South Carolina's Fifth Congressional District. Peoples National Bank again weathered a severe banking crisis during the Great Depression, and was the only bank in Rock Hill to remain open during the banking holiday of March 1933, just as Franklin D. Roosevelt was embarking on his first term as president. For nearly twenty years Peoples National Bank was the only bank active in the city.

During the 1930s the bank was active in promoting diversified farming in the region by encouraging crop rotation and soil conservation, fostering vegetable production when the boll weevil ruined cotton crops all over the South, and even paying half the salary of an agricultural instructor in the Rock Hill City schools.

In 1964 the bank merged with the Citizens and Southern Bank of South Carolina; it moved out of the Peoples National Bank Building in 1972.

The pre-World War II tenants of the Peoples National Bank Building included several prominent law firms, insurance companies, dentists, and doctors, and the Catawba Club-a social club. From 1910 to 1925 the only rented rooms were on the 2^nd and 3^rd floors (eight on each floor), but after the 1925 remodeling sixteen rooms were available for rent on each of the 2^nd 3^rd and 4^th floors.

The prominent law firm of Spencer and White-attorneys for the city of Rock Hill was one of the longest-term tenants. C.F.W. Spencer, the senior partner, was mayor of the city in the 1910s and on the board of directors for Peoples National Bank. Other law firms who rented space in the building included Wilson & Wilson, and William F. Cherry.

Several insurance companies maintained offices in the Peoples National Bank Building from 1910 through the 1940s, including Life & Casualty, Carolina Life, Southeastern Life, Durham Life, Metropolitan Life, and the Life Insurance Company of Virginia.

Several dentists and doctors occupied the building as well; by the 1930s a beauty shop rented space there. Additional tenants included cotton brokers, railroad agents, and contractors. Many rooms were vacant during the late 1930s. The fourth floor was occupied by the Catawba Club, a social and fraternal order, from 1910 to 1925.

Shortly after receiving its national charter, Peoples National Bank began construction of its own building, which was the first in the city constructed as a speculative office building, the first with a passenger elevator, and the tallest commercial building in Rock Hill.

The Peoples National Bank Building was designed by the prominent Columbia, S.C., firm of Shand & Lafaye, which designed many significant twentieth-century buildings in South Carolina from banks to hotels.

In 1925, Peoples National Bank enlarged its building, expanding the banking hall and adding new vaults, new offices on the first floor, and enlarging the mezzanine. It also subdivided the 4^th floor, formerly the Catawba Club, for offices and added twenty-four new offices to the rear addition.

The 1925 addition and remodeling was designed by Greensboro, N.C., architect C.C. Hartmann, who was responsible for many large steel-frame hotels and office buildings in the Carolinas, including the Citizens Bank Building, Rock Hill's first "skyscraper," built just west of the Peoples National Bank Building in 1924-26. The Peoples National Bank Building was the only modern speculative office building in Rock Hill until the Citizens Bank Building was completed.

After World War II the building was "modernized" when the original elevator was replaced by a self-service cab, the Main Street transom windows were replaced with glass block, also installed at the office entrance vestibule and in rear windows on the ground floor and mezzanine levels, and the ceiling in the banking hall was lowered.

In the mid-1970s, in an attempt to compete with suburban shopping centers, the City of Rock Hill enclosed the 100 block of East Main Street by installing a flat roof and air conditioning, creating the Town Center Mall. The mall roof was removed in 1995.

Building Description

The Peoples National Bank Building is a four-story, plus basement, bank and office building. It was constructed to house the banking hall and offices of the Peoples National Bank and the Peoples Trust Company on the first floor, rental offices on the second and third floors, and a social hall owned by a private club on the fourth floor; the front basement room housed the Peoples Barber Shop. Construction began in 1909, and the building was first occupied by Peoples National Bank on June 10, 1910, when the bank moved from its original location across Main Street. The building was remodeled and enlarged in 1925 and again after World War II, and was remodeled yet again in 1958 and in the early 1970s when it was converted into a clothing store. The ground floor has been unoccupied since 1988, and the upper floors were last occupied in the early 1970s.

The Peoples National Bank Building is a lot-line building and is located on the north side of the middle of the first block of East Main Street in the most urban part of downtown Rock Hill. It was located in a section of the north side of the 100 block of East Main Street that was largely destroyed by fire in 1898. The building is characterized by its sophisticated three-bay-wide, three-part classically-detailed facade with a limestone base, red pressed brick middle and top, and white terra cotta cornice.

The original rectangular-plan building was 32 feet wide by 110 ft. deep. In 1925, a rear addition was constructed that extended the building by 50 feet, the ground and fourth floors were remodeled, and the mezzanine was expanded to create five floors in the addition. After World War II the ground floor and mezzanine were again extended to the rear with the addition of one room and a vault on each floor. At this time the banking hall was also "modernized" by lowering the ceiling and installing glass block in existing window openings on Main Street, at the office entrance vestibule, and in rear windows on the ground floor and mezzanine levels. In 1958 the building's mechanical systems were upgraded and the wooden sash was replaced with aluminum sash. In about 1971 the Peoples National Bank moved and the office building was closed; Franklin's Clothing Store occupied the bank and offices on the first floor from that time until 1988. In the mid-1970s the first floor of the building was included in the Town Center Mall, created by building a roof over the entire 100 block of East Main Street; the mall roof was removed in 1995.

When constructed in 1909-1910 the office building and barber shop entrance was at the western bay of the facade and the banking entrance was at the central bay. A wooden stair that wrapped around an open decorative cage elevator led to the upper floors. A steep metal stair led to the barber shop in the basement. The elevator shaft was enclosed and both stairs rebuilt after World War II, when an internal stair was installed between the mezzanine and the second floor. From the bank floor, a metal stair installed in 1925 leads up to the mezzanine and down to the rear basement. A ladder-type fire escape is attached to the rear of the 1925 addition.

On the exterior, the tall limestone ground floor is characterized by its ionic columns (with Scamozzi capitals) and rusticated piers which carry an entablature that once had raised brass letters reading "The Peoples National Bank." The front entrance to the building is through a pair of glass doors, which replaced a pair of wooden and glass doors set in a pedimented surround. The side bays include storefront windows with glass block above, installed during the post-World War Il modernization; the glass block replaced the original prismatic glass transoms.

The middle part of the facade is two-story, of red pressed brick, and articulated with pilasters and brick spandrel panels at the third-floor lines. Above the third-floor windows are flat segmental arches articulated by white terra cotta keystones and impost blocks. The windows are 1/1 double-hung aluminum sash and were installed in 1958, replacing the original 1/1 double-hung wooden sash.

The top part of the facade is also red pressed brick, but is ornamented with Serlian motif window openings (with terra cotta entablature, architrace and pilaster capitals) inset between brick pilasters. The windows are now double-hung aluminum sash, replacing double-hung wooden casement windows with arched divided-light transoms. Below the windows, at the fourth-floor level, are copper-covered paneled balconies. The facade is topped by a bracketed terra cotta cornice and entablature, and a terra cotta balustrade, with brick piers.

The side and rear elevations are constructed of red common brick with 1/1 double-hung aluminum sash, originally 2/2 double-hung wooden sash. The arched fourth-floor windows (in the social hall of the Catawba Club) originally had divided-light tops. The windows of the first floor and mezzanine additions are glass block, installed after World War II. Most of these windows are now blocked by the two adjacent buildings.

The basement is in two parts: the front part contained the barbershop, and the rear part contained a boiler room, coal storage, two restrooms, a vault, and storage rooms. The barbershop was remodeled after World War II when the stairs and elevator were altered; it now contains two small restrooms and an elevator stop (the elevator did not originally go to the basement level). The interior detailing was also modernized and the casement sash windows with prismatic glass lights were closed in. The rear basement has not been significantly altered since it was completed in 1925 and extended after World War II.

The ground floor was not significantly altered when Franklin's Clothing moved into the space in 1971. It contains what was originally a large banking hall at the front of the building, three reinforced concrete vaults, and offices at the rear. The present dimensions of the banking hall date from 1925, when the building was enlarged and the space almost doubled in length. At the rear is a small metal stair that leads up to a mezzanine with two offices overlooking the banking hall, and down to the rear basement. On the west side of the space are tall marble-covered square columns.

An acoustical-tile ceiling installed in the 1940s obscures a coffered plaster ceiling, plaster cornice, and plaster Corinthian column capitals and brackets. The original ceiling height was approximately 19 feet; the present ceiling height in this space is approximately 16 feet. The walls are plaster, with marble wainscoting (installed in the 1940s, probably using the original wainscot). The banking hall is dominated by an enormous round vault door at the rear (under the mezzanine), probably installed in the 1960s. Additional alterations dating from after World War II included a new entry vestibule and new teller cages, no longer extant.

The floor plans of the second and third floors were originally, and after the 1925 addition, nearly identical. On each floor overlooking Main Street were two connected offices, now subdivided into three. On the west side of the building is a wide hallway, with offices on the west side of the hall. There were originally six offices on the second and third floors; there are now four and five offices, respectively, on those floors. The rooms at the front have been significantly altered by the installation of paneling and lowered acoustical tile ceilings. The second, third, and fourth floors are inset from the property line on the west elevation by 6½ feet to provide natural light for the offices and hall.

The fourth floor was originally a large hall with reception rooms and a restroom for the Catawba Club. It was subdivided into offices in 1925 with two offices overlooking Main Street and five additional offices on a side hall on the west side of the floor. The side hall connected to the center hall in the 1925 section.

The 1925 rear addition was constructed with a center hall connected to the side halls of the front (1909) portion of the building, with eight offices per floor. These offices are largely intact, though those in the rear section have been demolished and a stair constructed connecting the space to the mezzanine level below.