City Bank Farmers Trust Company Building

Abstract

FAR BE it from architects to admit they are doing anything other than designing the most practical building for its site. “The design of a modern skyscraper is not primarily a matter of aesthetic expression,” Cross & Cross wrote, presumably with faces as straight as the bizarre, heroically scaled heads that gaze down from their City Bank Farmers Trust Company Building. The parti of the building—with a blunt, slender, chamfered tower torqued against a keystone-shaped 15-story platform—was a response to factors such as the irregular site, the need to accommodate 5,000 bank employees and 2,000 additional renters, zoning laws, the intervals of elevator service, and the height at which the building would make a profitable return. But that goes little towards explaining the tower’s extraordinary mix of Neo-Renaissance, Expressionist, and modern classical styles.