Does this historic bank lobby have a future?
The monumental bank lobby at the landmark Uptown National Bank building seems to be of another era, when a visit to the bank wasn't hurried and lenders wanted customers to feel confident their money was safe and secure.
Indeed, the lobby is so of another time that Bridgeview Bank Group, which now owns the building at the corner of Broadway and Lawrence Avenue, doesn't know what to do with it.
Bank Chairman Peter Haleas says customers didn't use it much after Bridgeview acquired Uptown National Bank in 2003. So Bridgeview built a far smaller, modern, street-level branch space instead.
Chicago architect Benjamin Marshall, who was responsible for Chicago landmarks like the Drake Hotel and the Blackstone Hotel, designed the 12-story terra cotta building, which was completed in 1924 for the Sheridan Trust & Savings Bank. The bank failed during the Great Depression, and Uptown National Bank relocated there in 1937.
For now, the lobby has served as a backdrop in a couple of movies. But it effectively serves as a museum piece while operations workers use space behind the old-fashioned teller windows.
“We'd like to have some better use for it in the future,” Mr. Haleas says.