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Irwin Union Bank, Columbus, IndianaThe Irwin Union Bank building in Columbus Indiana United States. It consists of a one-story bank structure adjacent to a three-story office annex. A portion of the office annex was built along with the banking hall in 1954. The remaining and much larger portion, designed by Kevin Roche, John Dinkeloo and Associates, was built in 1973. The bank building is located on the northwest corner of Washington and Fifth streets. Washington Street is Columbus main street, and Fifth Street is a principal side street. Washington Street is lined with two and three story late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century commercial buildings, built to the property line in the front and on the sides. Eero Saarinen designed the bank building with the glazed banking hall to be seen as a foreground building on the corner, set off by the blank background of the three-story brick annex to the north. The 1973 addition expanded the annex westward. The main entrance to the building is on the east (Washington Street) side of the banking hall. Two steel and glass vestibule connectors lead from the north side of this structure to the annex. A corridor along the south side of the annex continues into the glazed arcade of the 1973 addition. Banking hall The banking hall has glazed walls with a steel window system on all four sides (photos 1 and 2). It is a one story flat-roofed structure with a wide roof overhang. On the main (east) and south faades, the building is held approximately 12 feet back from the inside edge of the sidewalk. There is no expression of the structural system visible on the exterior. There is a drive-up window on the west side. Roof There are nine shallow domes on the roof covered with standing seam metal roofing (see c.1955 photo taken from roof of building across Washington Street). The domes are significant in that while carving space, or void, out of interior ceiling plane, they add exterior sculptural form, or mass, to the otherwise minimalist, thin roof plane. The forms are visible from inside as volumes of light, from the street as sculptural forms, and from adjacent taller buildings as a distinct geometric composition, a roof-scape. The large lightweight domes, centered on the nine square column bays, reduce the dead load of the concrete roof slab making its slender cross section possible. Elevations The elevations of the building are composed of little more than the glazing system and the roof slab. The glazing system rests on a continuous curb of Indiana limestone that is about four inches high. The roof slab is painted reinforced concrete at about 12 feet above grade. It is approximately 12 inches thick, with a continuous steel angle, flange down, that functions as a coping. There are 12 bays of windows on each side, each about eight feet wide. Each glazing bay is two lights high. The lower light is about two feet high; and the upper light continues to the underside of the roof slab. The glazing system is made up of welded, quarter-inch steel flat stock, which is perpendicular to the glass and bent to form the interior window stop. Each glazing bay is a separate frame. The perimeter frames are about five inches deep. The horizontal member of the dividing mullion is held back from the face of the frame by about one-and-a-half inches. Glass is dual-glazed clear glass. The exterior stops are three-quarter inch by three-quarter inch stainless steel bars or tubes, screwed in place. At the building corners, the vertical steel plates of the glazing system meet at the inside corner, leaving an open corner on the outside. The entrance vestibule, the vestibule connectors to the arcade, and the drive-up teller enclosure area, are all about eight feet high, and are detailed with a similar glazing system. Window coverings are continuous, floor-to ceiling reed blinds, as specified by Saarinen. Inside the banking hall, eight-inch round steel columns, arranged in nine square bays, support the roof (photo 3). The banking hall is one large room except for a low-walled enclosure containing private offices in the north central bay. The primary flooring material is a buff-colored, waxed brick paver. (Some areas have been carpeted in recent years.) The ceiling is plaster. The insides of the saucer domes are finished with a fibrous acoustical coating. Centered in each of the domes is an indirect uplight fixture made of a shallow brushed stainless steel bowl suspended by taut steel cables. In the center bay there is a stair to the lower level. The stairs have white oak treads with open risers, rectangular walnut handrails, and guardrails and balusters of machined satin-finish stainless steel (photo 4). Bar stock is used for the top rails and frames, and rod for the verticals. The stair is partially suspended by the closely spaced vertical rods and is related to a pair of similar but grander suspended stairways in Saarinens General Motors Technical Center (1957), which was under development at the same time. Furnishing Furnishings in the banking hall have evolved over the years. The original, single-pedestal desks were designed by George Nelson (1907-1986) for the Herman Miller Company. Side chairs were Saarinen-designed with metal legs, molded fiberglass shells, and upholstered seats. Current desks are adaptations of the same George Nelson furniture (see c.1955 interior photograph), redesigned slightly to accommodate modern electronic requirements. New side chairs are the Saarinen-designed armchair version of the original chairs. Nelson-inspired planters were installed to function as wireways (photo 3). The Saarinen-designed teller line was modified as part of the 1973 rehabilitation by Roche-Dinkeloo. The original teller line used panels ofprimary colors, which, by the 1970s was deemed dated. These were replaced with neutralcolored panels. The current teller line was reduced in length in 1999 (see Floor Plan). Despite these alterations in furnishings, the general office layout, interior and exterior finishes, and the architects original intentions have been respected and meticulously maintained. The office area within the banking hall is a freestanding structure about eight feet high, paneled with walnut on the south side (facing the stairs; see photo 3). The remaining sides are file cabinets and sliding masonite-doored storage cupboards, set into the wall to form a complete storage unit. All is painted a greenish gray. The office structure is divided into three spaces, each walnut-paneled with built-in George Nelson casework, and a wired glass ceiling, supported by a stainless steel frame. The office annex, as noted above, never had a presence on the street, and was never intended to be viewed as a part of the bank. It was intended to be seen only as a blank wall of glazed brick, and shared no characteristics of form or material with the banking hall structure. The annex structure has a poured-in-place concrete frame, with concrete floor slabs. The north wall, which faces an alley, is infilled with painted concrete block and stainless steel casement and fixed windows. The south elevation is faced with a gray and black speckled glazed brick. Several openings have been cut into this wall in addition to the original openings that led to the banking hall. The northeast elevation is against a party wall, and the west elevation now abuts the 1973 addition. The configuration of the Saarinen office annex has been altered, with some exceptions. For example, the triangular stairway at the east end of the annex is intact. 1973 addition The 1973 Roche-Dinkeloo addition is a substantial building in its own right. The addition reads as a separate building connected to the Saarinen bank building by a glazed arcade. It utilizes the same brick, in a sense appropriating that material, making it and the special glass of the arcade the dominant materials of the addition. The 1973 addition is a three-story steel-framed office building. At the east and west ends are windowless rectangles of brick that contain stairs, mechanical areas, restrooms, storage, and conference rooms (see Floor Plan). Between these bookends are clear-span open offices furnished with cubicles. This concept of spatial division is further articulated in the structural system of the open offices, where the north-south trusses of the floor system are left exposed, and are interlaced with the ductwork of the mechanical system. The lighting for the spaces is integrated as a part of the truss. The bottom flange of the truss is modified to function as a continuous valance for linear fluorescent light fixtures that are attached to the truss. The floor trusses bear on columns in the north and south walls, which also function as mullions for the glass that is glazed with neoprene gaskets directly to the steel structure. The north faade of the addition is glazed. There is a broad patio the length of the building. A vertical, open trellis of painted steel pipe serves as the north wall of the patio. The adjacent parking lot is landscaped with little leaf linden trees that date from the 1960s. On the south of the building, the form of the trellis is echoed in a glazed arcade that runs the length of the addition structure (photos 5 and 6), and continues parallel with the glazed brick wall of the annex to an entrance on Washington Street. As in the elevations of the office area, the painted steel structural system is also used as a mullion that the glass is attached to with neoprene gaskets. The glass in the arcade of the annex is horizontally banded with reflective strips that are about three inches wide, alternating with strips of clear glass. The glass was manufactured specifically for this project. The initial planting design consisted of a perimeter planting or colonnade of canopy trees on four sides of the glass and steel banking structure. Tree trunks and canopy create a natural portico for the structure, extending the structure to the street line or to adjacent buildings. The height and canopy of trees at maturity also completed the urban wall created by the adjacent Victorian storefronts. Early photographs of the landscape indicated that the trees were sweet gum (see c.1955 exterior photograph).
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