Commercial National Bank Building

“The Commercial National Bank Building epitomizes Daniel H. Burnham's design sensibility for grandly scaled commercial office buildings with Classical Revival detailing. The building, compared to Burnham's earlier bank buildings including the First National Bank, reflects the firm's evolving ideas on the merging of the iconic temple-front bank buildings with a tripartite commercial high-rise form.”

“The firm was founded in 1896 by architect and planner Daniel H. Burnham (1846-1912), and quickly became one of the largest architectural concerns in the country. The firm was the first Chicago architectural office to have a substantial nationwide practice, with branch offices in New York and San Francisco and important buildings constructed in cities throughout the United States, including New York, Boston, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, and New Orleans.”

“The Commercial National Bank Building has experienced changes common to buildings of its vintage and use. On the exterior, the ground level storefronts and two main entrances have been modified and a lighting soffit added above the first floor.”

“The Commercial National Bank Building exemplifies the firm's adaptation of Classical Revival to the high-rise commercial form. The Commercial National Bank Building was also among the first of Burnham & Company's designs to tie the tripartite commercial high-rise to the iconic temple-style bank building to create a new form of bank building in Chicago.”

“Commercial National Bank commissioned D. H. Burnham & Company to design its new headquarters. The firm had just completed work on the First National Bank Building at the northwest corner of Dearborn and Monroe (demolished in 1969), which at the time was the largest and most expensive office building to be constructed in the city.”

“Daniel Burnham and the Classical Revival Style The 1893 Columbian Exposition marked the beginning of Daniel Burnham's championing of Classical architecture in the United States, both in the design of individual buildings through his architecture firm and through his involvement with the City Beautiful movement, which sought to impose the aesthetic quality and planned order of Classicism to the planning of new American cities.”

“Completed in 1907, the building was a precursor to the monumental Classical Revival banks that would form an urban canyon along LaSalle Street by the late 1920s. The Commercial National Bank Building epitomizes the Classical Revival architectural style utilized for large-scale commercial buildings.”

“On December 28, 1905, the Chicago Tribune reported that the Commercial National Bank had secured a building permit estimated at $2.6 million, the second largest building permit in the city's history, topped only by the First National Bank Building's $3 million permit from 1902.”

“The success of the Exposition was in no small part due to Daniel Burnham's remarkable drive and vision, and marked the beginning of his career as a city planner, which culminated in his development with Edward H. Bennett of the Plan of Chicago in 1909.”