Second Bank of the United States
A quintessential “Greek Revival” building, the Second Bank is recognizably inspired by Parthenon in Athens (447-432 BCE). It is what the advertisement for the design competition had prescribed: a “chaste imitation of Grecian architecture in its simplest and least expensive form.” Of course, the Second Bank is smaller than its Athenian model, the details are simplified, and the side elevations, rather than shady colonnades, are plain marble walls, punctuated by windows that admit useful light to the functioning interiors.
This “second” national bank came to be when the financial disruption of the War of 1812 made some regret that the charter of the First Bank had been allowed to expire in 1811. Congress was then successfully lobbied to establish this replacement in 1816. The ensuing architectural competition, announced in May 1818, attracted designs by the French-born Maximilian Godefroy, the English-born Benjamin Henry Latrobe, and the latter’s former apprentice, William Strickland (1788-1854). Strickland’s ardently Greek design owed something to Latrobe’s thinking, but the pupil beat his master to win the commission.
Nicholas Biddle, an ardent Hellenophile, joined the board of the bank after construction had commenced, and he thus had little to do with the design of the building that was completed in 1824. However, he was a well-traveled and eloquent spokesman for the relevance of studying classical civilization and an embodiment of the philosophy that earned Philadelphia the title “Athens of America.” When Jacksonian populists campaigned against the bank in the 1830s, Biddle, its third president, led the defense of the institution and, collaterally, its gleaming marble headquarters.
Despite Biddle’s best efforts, the bank was not renewed in 1836. He was able to obtain a state charter, which allowed the barrel-vaulted, Ionic-columned banking hall to continue to function as originally intended until 1841. But it was taken over by the Treasury Department in 1845 and re-used as the Philadelphia Custom House, a role that it played until 1935. Acquired by the National Park Service in 1939 and restored in 2002-2004, the building is home to the large collection of portraits that Charles Wilson Peale created for his Philadelphia Museum.