This is a bank building just north of downtown Columbus. I've seen it dozens of times in the last few years as I've driven around town, and it seems that each time I see it I'm reminded of something different.
You can clearly see how it was built, and in what stages. First was the Neo-Grecian section--the first five floors (ending one floor above the columns). Next, a sixth floor was added; somewhat in sync with the details of the original, but beginning to express the Modernist abhorrence of ornament. This addition probably occurred in the first two decades of the twentieth century, although I could be mistaken. The final addition, the top three floors, came a little later, as detail work has been all but eliminated from the design, leaving very few lines to continue upward to the top floor. This summation, while not using the ultra-Modern ribbon window as an element, still distills the original bank facade to its most component parts--indeed, taken any further the design would risk losing the bay pattern set up below, and would begin to emulate the skyscraper in the left background. Seen in this light, the building is an interesting example of "Modernism in action."
As a totality, however, the design goes beyond that description. By stratifying the various decorative efforts, the design sets up a sectional differentiation that allows vertical hierarchies to exist. In this sense, it is extremely fortunate that none of the renovations attempted to remove the previous editions--if they had, we would be left with a non-descript eight-story bank building that would sit virtually unnoticed in the urban landscape. Because we can see each layer, however, the visitor is allowed to visually explore the building's history, much as a child looks at a diagram of earth strata to learn about dinosaurs. This reading of the building as a series of distinct layers allows one to speculate about possible interior plans for the various levels--do they also run the gamut from Beaux Arts to Minimalist? One almost hopes that they do, for the sake of continuing the arguments and readings suggested by the facade.
What can we learn from this building? I'm reminded of Chinese indigenous building trends, where houses get added onto in a similar fashion. After a time you can read the vertical stretch of a building as the history not only of a single house, but of an entire block, or even a town, as it starts from a collection of one-story shacks and grows with the families to a 4-story mass of housing through which are cut streets, revealing the history of each family to the passersby. The geological strata of the earth become continued in the built landscape, as each successive generation places its remnants on top of those previous.
What a wonderful way to preserve history! If you're interested in what came before, just go a few floors down--you'll find it there, preserved...
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