Gina May looks upward, taking stock of the slick marble, rich English oak, and bronze patina banisters of KeyBank’s downtown Toledo branch.
“I love the depth of the first and second floor and the fact it has the mezzanine,” said Ms. May, the bank’s facilities manager. “I’m sure even when it was opened it was considered beautiful. You can easily imagine what it would have looked like full of busy people.”
Today the old bank at 245 N. Superior St., rarely bustles, its tremendous size an unnecessary relic of the past. Key plans to move out next month in favor of a smaller, modern downtown branch about a block away.
Built in 1916 by Northern National Bank, the structure was conceived in an era of architectural exuberance. And though not entirely original, the building is likely the best surviving example of the city’s gilded banking boom before the Great Depression ultimately wiped out nearly all of Toledo’s large banks.
PHOTO GALLERY: A tour of the historic Key Bank building
While many of the city’s other architectural treasures were broken up and hauled off to the dump in the name of progress, the KeyBank building has been nearly untouched for 80 years.
The two elevators still have brass buttons and nonautomatic doors and grates that must be opened by hand.
Nearly every edge inside the building has intricate moldings. The original marble floors in the bank still shine bright, reflecting the soft glow of the eight chandeliers.
“We take care of things, we maintain our properties, and we’re sensitive to community needs,” said James Hoffman, KeyBank’s regional president. “It would be awful to take a historic structure like this and emasculate it. You don’t need all this, but it doesn’t mean you come in and chop it up,”
Cleveland-based KeyCorp, which owns KeyBank, can trace its history all the way back to Northern National, the start of Key’s business lineage.
No other banking company has occupied the building since it was new.
In spite of that heritage, modern banking doesn’t require that much space. The old building spans 11,000 square feet, more than four times the space that a new branch typically requires.
With Key investing $4 million for a new regional headquarters and a new street-level branch in the Edison Plaza building in downtown Toledo, the time was right to let the property go.
“You’ve got a little bit of mixed emotions, there’s certainly a tie to the past, but when we look at meeting customer needs, what we can do down there will be so much more contemporary and of value,” Mr. Hoffman said.
The branch’s last day will be July 24. The new branch will open the following Monday.
A downtown landmark for 100 years, the building represented a changing era in banking.
When Toledo’s last horses shared the streets with the city’s first automobiles, banks were far from the ornate shrines to capitalism they would eventually become.
Historian Timothy Messer-Kruse, in a 2004 book on Toledo’s banking history, observed that at the turn of the century “all of Toledo’s banks occupied storefronts little larger than the drugstores and flea-bag hotels with which they shared their buildings.”
But as the city — and its bankers — got richer, Toledo’s banks got bigger and more opulent.
It started in 1904, when the First National Bank built a neoclassical building on Summit Street. Ohio Savings and Trust Co. Bank erected the Ohio Building at Madison and Superior in 1906. People’s Savings Association followed in 1909 with another neoclassical building on Huron Street. The next year, Merchants & Clerks Savings Bank moved into a new building on Summit Street that was reminiscent of designs from the famed architect Louis Sullivan, who has been called the “father of skyscrapers” and the “father of modernism.”
Northern National Bank showed some measure of restraint in its own neoclassical building.
After all, Second National Bank had already built a 22-story tower on Summit Street in 1913. Richly appointed with gilded ceilings and mahogany woodwork, the structure cost $1.3 million, Mr. Messer-Kruse said in his book.
Contemporary sources put the cost of Northern National’s building at Superior and Madison Avenue at a more reasonable $200,000.
Designed by George Mills, one of Toledo’s most prominent architects, the building was covered with fine Indiana limestone outside and creamy French limestone inside. Botticino marble was imported from Italy. The basement housed a giant vault. The building had a row of merchant shops which had entrances along Madison Avenue, which since have been converted into offices off of the bank lobby.
As Northern National grew more successful, eventually becoming Toledo Trust in 1924, the architectural arms race of Toledo’s banking elite continued to escalate.
It culminated with the city’s last pre-Depression skyscraper, the 368-foot-tall headquarters of the Ohio Bank that was completed in 1930 at Madison and Superior.
The tower, though beautiful, may have helped usher in the end.
By mid-1931, Ohio Bank had closed its doors for good. More closures followed, and come August, Toledo Trust was the only major bank still open in Toledo.
Not only was it open, it was strong. While other banks were reorganizing, Toledo Trust was redecorating.
In a four-month period stretching from December, 1931, to April, 1932, the Northern National bank was revamped to add office space. The shops along Madison were removed, allowing for twice as many teller cages. The once-marble walls were now covered in English oak, a move one bank official told a local newspaper that saved considerable money. New vault doors were added.
The renovation may have been a show of strength in those uncertain times, an act of necessity, or both.
As other banks had closed, Toledo Trust was establishing temporary branches throughout the city. The company certainly needed more space to handle the extra work.
By the end of 1932, Toledo Trust reported having $2.96 million in its vault.
Toledo’s banks reopened in the intervening years as the nation’s financial system stabilized, but the oversized style of the pre-Depression era had passed. New banks weren’t built to the same grandeur, and many of the old banks were either demolished or their ornate banking lobbies were stripped.
The original design for Northern National was done by the firm of Mills, Rhines, Bellman, and Nordhoff.
Led by Mr. Mills, a London-born architect who came to the United States as a boy, the partnership was one of the premiere groups in all of the Midwest.
The firm was responsible for some of Toledo’s most enduring landmarks, including the Commodore Perry Hotel, Lamson’s department store, the Ohio Bank building, the First Congregational Church on Collingwood Avenue, and a number of homes on River Road, including the Jacobean revival George Ross Ford home.
Before starting that partnership, Mr. Mills had designed the Toledo Club, the clubhouse of the Toledo Country Club, the Berdan Building, and a number of other important buildings. Mr. Mills also led a 1909 contingent of local businessmen who lobbied John North Willys to come to Toledo to inspect the shuttered Pope automotive plant.
Five years later, Mr. Mills was designing the Willys Overland administration building.
Key has listed its building at $441,000. Mr. Hoffman said there’s already been a high level of interest, though the bank plans to vet buyers as much as buyers vet the building.
“We’re going to be very careful about who we sell it to,” Mr. Hoffman said. “This building has got to be taken care of.”
Pete Shawaker, an agent with Reichle Klein Group who specializes in downtown commercial real estate, said he’s had more interest in the bank property than any other downtown property in a long time. Part of that’s location, part of it is the excitement about downtown over ProMedica’s plans.
“The other factor is the real historic ambience of the property and the fact that it’s been occupied and well maintained for 100 years,” he said
“KeyBank did a phenomenal job of maintenance through modern systems. It’s got modern systems in a historic building. You don’t see that combination of factors very often.”
Contact Tyrel Linkhorn at tlinkhorn@theblade.com or 419-724-6134 or on Twitter @BladeAutoWriter.
First Published June 28, 2015, 4:00 a.m.
