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Old First American Bank and Trust

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1919, Joseph E. Rosatti for Braseth and Rosatti; or Henry J. Scherer. Front St. at 3rd St.
  • (Photograph by Steve C. Martens)

The design of this Prairie Style bank has been credited to Rosatti of Fargo based on a 1918 rendering that corresponds to the bank as built, and to Scherer, who is identified locally as the bank’s architect. The bank is analogous to the Bank of Gilby (GF35), and others designed in a similar mode like that in Minto (WA3). Perhaps inspired by the design of Purcell and Elmslie published in Western Architect, several North Dakota architects dabbled in the Prairie Style. Rosatti was likely introduced to it as part of his education at the University of Michigan and Scherer from his years of study in Minnesota, where he might have seen Purcell and Elmslie’s banks there.

This bank and that of Gilby are composed as a simple rectangular frame of brick with a cornice extending across the front. The broadly proportioned entrance is subdivided by a pair of emphatic Prairie Style columns, surmounted by an expansive transom window. Designs of the terra-cotta capitals and escutcheons are drawn abstractly from classical motifs. Large upper windows that once spanned the entire front of the second story were replaced with glass block as part of a 1977 face-lift. The architecturally adventure-some bank ceased operations in 2010 and the building is vacant.

Writing Credits

Author: 
Steve C. Martens and Ronald H. L. M. Ramsay
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Data

What's Nearby

Sacred Heart Catholic Church
Koda Bank (Bank of Minto, Minto Commercial Bank)
Bremer Bank, Gilby Branch (Bank of Gilby)

Citation

Steve C. Martens and Ronald H. L. M. Ramsay, "Old First American Bank and Trust", [Forest River, North Dakota], SAH Archipedia, eds. Gabrielle Esperdy and Karen Kingsley, Charlottesville: UVaP, 2012—, http://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/ND-01-WA4.

Print Source

Cover: Buildings of North Dakota

Buildings of North Dakota, Steve C. Martens and Ronald H. L. M. Ramsay. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2015, 91-91.

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