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Security Bank (First National Bank)

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1966, Peters and Fields. 307 S. Main Ave.

This bank exemplifies a bank design popular in the 1960s: a New Formalist pavilion. The building rests on a raised base and features a skin of dark glass in bronze-colored mullions alternating with floating vertical panels of travertine. A flat roof extends well beyond the exterior walls, supported with seeming weightlessness on thin steel columns that feature attached canister lights at the second-floor level. The uniformity of the roof edge and the repeating rhythm of the peripteral colonnade allow the volumes beneath to advance and recede without disrupting the structural order of the composition. The sleek travertine skin contrasts strangely with the rubble-stone ramps and planters around the periphery.

At 214 S. Main, the West Texas State Bank (formerly the First State Bank) of 1954 by J. J. Black was considerably toned down in an expansion that entailed duplicating the original bank to the north. Although Black’s thin, flat-topped piers were retained, the dense, layered screen with which he faced the loggia wall was removed, eliminating the rich rhythm and texture it added to this small but complex building.

Writing Credits

Author: 
Gerald Moorhead et al.
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Citation

Gerald Moorhead et al., "Security Bank (First National Bank)", [Monahans, Texas], SAH Archipedia, eds. Gabrielle Esperdy and Karen Kingsley, Charlottesville: UVaP, 2012—, http://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/TX-02-MT39.

Print Source

Buildings of Texas

Buildings of Texas: East, North Central, Panhandle and South Plains, and West, Gerald Moorhead and contributors. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2019, 468-468.

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