Throwback Thursday – Amalgamated Trust and Savings Bank

This week, as part of our Throwback Thursday nostalgia tour, we take a trip back to Chicago 1972 for the opening of the Epstein designed and engineered Amalgamated Trust and Savings Bank. This 5-story, 60,000 square foot $4M facility located at the corner of State and Monroe more than tripled Amalgamated old space at 111 S. Dearborn.

This new building feature a bronzed metal and glass curtain wall exterior with a structural frame of reinforced concrete and steel. Interestingly, while this building was, in essence, new, the structural frame wasnt. This Amalgamated facility was located on the site of the former Morris B. Sachs retail store, a three-story building that was gutted and reduced to its frame and then reinforced. An additional two floors were then added to the structure.

The first floor of the new Amalgamated building featured 24 teller stations, a customer office, personal banking services and conference rooms. The second floor was dedicated to executive offices, the credit and loan departments, and a special services counter. The trust department, board rooms and conference rooms were on the third floor. The top two floors house various Amalgamated operating departments.

An interesting side note to the development of this facility was that our two main clients at Amalgamated were Martin Gecht and Eugene Heytow, the chairman of the board and president, respectively, who were also hotel developers and hired Epstein in the early 60s to design and engineer the Essex Inn, a 14 story, 254-room hotel located at 8th and Michigan in Chicago. (FYI - We profiled the Essex Inn in a Throwback post back in December, heres that link http://goo.gl/3OGVXk)

Lastly this building still stands and is still an Amalgamated facility as well, although back in October the bank put the building on the market citing that it had run out of room at this 40+ year old facility. Amalgamated will be moving into their new space at 30 N. LaSalle in September.