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First National Bank, alterations
Purcell, Feick and Elmslie
Bismarck, North Dakota 1912
Parabiographies entry, Volume for 1910
Text by William Gray Purcell
for 1912
Job Date (in Parabiographies): [1912]
FIRST NATIONAL BANK, Bismarck, North Dakota
A very difficult job of remodeling both structurally and as architectural design. The problem was to unite a very old-fashioned store building and a very old-fashioned corner banking room to produce, exterior and interior, a new banking office with real contemporary feeling. I went to Bismarck to explore and confer, used every but of canny judgment and common sense I could summon, to accomplish the reconstruction surgery that was necessary, with as little confusion and as much economy as possible. The bank's business had to go on first in one hand and then in the other while the work was being done. We tried to make every constructional item count in the design. The building continues to serve, after forty years, with a good clean modern feeling, both inside and out, and there has never been any question with respect to the general plan articulation in providing for both the public and officers. A word of credit goes to Miss Parker among others who gave fine cooperation to Fournier in faithful study of the working drawings.
Collection: William Gray Purcell Papers, Northwest Architectural Archives, University of Minnesota [AR:B4d1.6]
research courtesy mark hammons