Promotional Advertising Bank"The Bank Of Union"Monroe,North Carolina,, Circa 1900

Hi
Everyone.
I want to share with you another promotional advertising steel bank, this time from North Carolina.
The Bank Of Union, Chartered in late XIX century, fail in the Great Depression 1930.
Still Manufatured By W.F.Burns Company,Chicago,&New-York,Patented 1 January 1901, this model as smooth corner.
Picture #3; Bank of Union circa 1905
Thanks for Viewing.
Alan

The Monroe Downtown Historic District consists of the Old Union County Courthouse with its square and approximately six blocks of commercial buildings to the west and south of the courthouse. These blocks include the surviving, intact, pre-1935 portions of the city's central business district. The commercial buildings that make up the district are from one to five stories tall, all of masonry construction, in a variety of styles and dates from 1875 to the early 1930s, illustrating the development of the downtown during that period. There are twenty-six contributing properties in the district and nine non-contributing ones, plus one property already listed in the National Register, the Old Union County Courthouse.

The Old County Courthouse is located on a ridge overlooking the valley of Bearskin Creek and the railroad corridor next to it. For anyone approaching the downtown, the great height and mass of the courthouse's tower provides a landmark. Surrounding the courthouse is a landscaped square containing several large trees and, on the west side, the Confederate Monument. Sloping downhill from the courthouse on all sides is a grid pattern of streets, part of the original plan for the county seat laid out by commissioners appointed in 1843.

Historically, the two major streets in the central business district have been N. Main (formerly Lafayette) street and Franklin Street, which intersect at the southwest corner of the courthouse square. Until the early 1970s, Main Street led to the railroad station, but in the 1970s, Main, north of the old courthouse, was converted to a mall at the end of which was placed the new courthouse. The east side of the courthouse square, which was the last side to be built up with brick structures, has also been the most redeveloped and has lost its integrity. The north side of the square, while retaining several early buildings, including the oldest structure in the city [1847Jail], the old Monroe City Hall [1893] (individually listed in the National Register), has also lost its integrity due to alterations.

Two corners of the courthouse square are anchored by buildings which, by their height and formality, reinforce the old county courthouse. At southwest corner is the Hotel Joffre Building of 1917-1919, a five-story yellow tapestry brick, limestone trimmed Classical Revival style edifice that stretches down W. Franklin Street, filling the north end of its block. At the southeast corner of the plaza is the three-story Bank of Union of 1905-06, a tan brick classical Revival style bank/office building with a prominent, domed corner tower which is supported by flanking buildings of a similar style.
In addition to the Hotel Joffre, the west side of the courthouse plaza includes the two-story, stuccoed brick Peoples Bank Building of 1875. Although altered on the first floor around 1900, this building is one of the earliest and most handsome masonry structures built in Monroe.

The south face of the plaza consists of two-story brick commercial buildings dating from the 1870s to the late 1920s in Italianate, Classical Revival and Italian Renaissance Revival styles. Some shopfronts have been altered, but the upper levels of the buildings, and several of the shopfronts are intact.

N. Main Street slopes down from the courthouse plaza to the beginnings of the residential area at its south end. Historically, the greatest concentration of buildings has been at the north end of Main Street, and this is also the best-preserved section.
At the southwest corner of Main and Franklin Streets is the Victorian Eclectic styled Lee Building, constructed in 1901. Although the building's shopfront has been replaced, the ornate upper levels of the former dry goods store are intact. Next to the Lee Building are two other Victorian Eclectic buildings, constructed for the Belk Brothers in 1901 and ca.1905, which are now joined at the first floor. On the east side of the block are two-story brick commercial structures dating from the turn of the century to the early 1930s, anchored at the south end by the three-story Belk/Bundy Building of 1901. While the building's Spanish tile pent cornice has been removed for safety reasons, the yellow brick clad Italian Renaissance Revival style design enlivened by white glazed terra cotta trim conveys the prosperity of Monroe's early twentieth century business district.