This elegant Renaissance Revival building in painted brown-stone reflects the importance of the finance industry in Baltimore and the city’s role as a national center for manufacturing and shipping. It is also perhaps the oldest building in the Central Business District to survive the 1904 fire. Moreover, it represents an era when banks erected single-purpose structures meant to evoke security and prosperity through the use of dignified, classically inspired architectural motifs. It was erected by builders Gardner and Matthews for the Eutaw Savings Bank, established in 1847, as the company’s first purpose-built structure.
By 1887, the company had outgrown this building and had built a new one opposite, at 20 N. Eutaw, designed by Charles L. Carson. This larger and more elaborate brownstone building, in a similar yet more finely articulated Renaissance Revival style, was an indication of the company’s growing prosperity. The original building was then sold to the Baltimore Equitable Society, one of the nation’s first and largest fire insurance companies, established in 1794. The “fire mark” depicting clasped hands appeared on the facades of buildings, indicating the protection bestowed to policyholders and alerting firefighters. The bank relocated to a multipurpose structure in 2003, finally following a national trend disregarded for decades by most of Baltimore’s financial institutions, which favored remaining in their purpose-built structures as emblematic of their long-standing service to the community.