The Bank of America Building, also known as 10 Light Street and formerly as the Baltimore Trust Company Building, is a 34-story,

skyscraper A skyscraper is a tall continuously habitable building having multiple floors. Modern sources currently define skyscrapers as being at least or in height, though there is no universally accepted definition. Skyscrapers are very tall high-ris ...

located at the corner of

East Baltimore East or Orient is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from west and is the direction from which the Sun rises on the Earth. Etymology As in other languages, the word is formed from the fac ...

and

Light Street Maryland Route 2 (MD 2) is the longest state highway in the U.S. state of Maryland. The route runs from Solomons Island in Calvert County north to an intersection with U.S. Route 1 (US 1)/ US 40 Truck ( North Avenue) in Baltimore. The route ...

s in

downtown Baltimore Downtown Baltimore is the central business district of the city of Baltimore traditionally bounded by Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard to the west, Franklin Street to the north, President Street to the east and the Inner Harbor area to the s ...

Maryland Maryland ( ) is a state in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It shares borders with Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware and the Atlantic Ocean to ...

Description

10 Light Street was the tallest building in the state, and the tallest office building in the United States south of New York City when constructed in 1929. The

Art Deco Art Deco, short for the French ''Arts Décoratifs'', and sometimes just called Deco, is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design, that first appeared in France in the 1910s (just before World War I), and flourished in the Unite ...

building was designed by the firm of Taylor and Fisher, and completed in eighteen months, fashioned from Indiana sandstone and local brick over a steel frameKelly, Denwood N., Shank Jr., Armand M., and Gordon, Thomas S. (1996). ''Money & Banking in Maryland''. p. 48.

Maryland Historical Society The Maryland Center for History and Culture (MCHC), formerly the Maryland Historical Society (MdHS), . founded on March 1, 1844, is the oldest cultural institution in the U.S. state of Maryland. The organization "collects, preserves, and inte ...

, Baltimore. at a cost of (U.S.) $3 million.Olson, Sherry H. (1997). ''Baltimore: The Building of an American City''. pp. 314-15. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, Maryland. The building's exterior is decorated with carved Romanesque human and animal images, stylized eagles, and is capped with a copper and gold roof. The ornate, two-story main banking lobby is highly decorated with

mosaic A mosaic is a pattern or image made of small regular or irregular pieces of colored stone, glass or ceramic, held in place by plaster/mortar, and covering a surface. Mosaics are often used as floor and wall decoration, and were particularly pop ...

floors designed by

Hildreth Meiere Hildreth may refer to: Places * Hildreth, California *Hildreth, Nebraska *Hildreth Cemetery Hildreth Cemetery is a small cemetery located on Hildreth Street at Sutherland and By Streets in the Centralville neighborhood of Lowell, Massachusetts. ...

, and historic

mural A mural is any piece of graphic artwork that is painted or applied directly to a wall, ceiling or other permanent substrate. Mural techniques include fresco, mosaic, graffiti and marouflage. Word mural in art The word ''mural'' is a Spani ...

s by

Griffith Baily Coale Griffith Baily Coale (21 May 1890, Baltimore - 20 August 1950, Stonington)Entry
@

Baltimore fire of 1904 The Great Baltimore Fire raged in Baltimore, Maryland from Sunday, February 7, to Monday, February 8, 1904. More than 1,500 buildings were completely leveled, and some 1,000 severely damaged, bringing property loss from the disaster to an estimate ...

, and the writing of the

National Anthem A national anthem is a patriotic musical composition symbolizing and evoking eulogies of the history and traditions of a country or nation. The majority of national anthems are marches or hymns in style. American, Central Asian, and European n ...

at the

Battle of Baltimore The Battle of Baltimore (September 12–15, 1814) was a sea/land battle fought between British invaders and American defenders in the War of 1812. American forces repulsed sea and land invasions off the busy port city of Baltimore, Maryland ...

during the

War of 1812 The War of 1812 (18 June 1812 – 17 February 1815) was fought by the United States of America and its indigenous allies against the United Kingdom and its allies in British North America, with limited participation by Spain in Florida. It bega ...

. These mosaics are planned to be covered by artificial turf, so that the historic lobby can be used as an

Under Armour Under Armour, Inc. is an American sports equipment company that manufactures footwear, sports and casual apparel. Under Armour's global headquarters are located in Baltimore, Maryland, with additional offices located in Amsterdam (European hea ...

gym.

History

Shortly after the Baltimore Trust Company moved into the building in 1929, the

Great Depression The Great Depression (19291939) was an economic shock that impacted most countries across the world. It was a period of economic depression that became evident after a major fall in stock prices in the United States. The economic contagio ...

began and the company floundered. The building was essentially vacant within a year, as the bank went into bankruptcy in 1933 and receivership in 1935. The empty building was subsequently used by the

New Deal The New Deal was a series of programs, public work projects, financial reforms, and regulations enacted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the United States between 1933 and 1939. Major federal programs agencies included the Civilian Cons ...

Public Works Administration The Public Works Administration (PWA), part of the New Deal of 1933, was a large-scale public works construction agency in the United States headed by Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes. It was created by the National Industrial Recove ...

in Maryland. From the 1940s into the 1960s, the building was first known as the Mathieson Building and then the O'Sullivan Building, reflecting its then-current major tenants. In 1947, the building housed the transmitter and antenna of

WMAR-TV WMAR-TV (channel 2) is a television station in Baltimore, Maryland, United States, affiliated with ABC and owned by the E. W. Scripps Company. The station's studios and offices are located on York Road (Maryland Route 45) in Towson (though with ...

, the first TV station in Maryland and 14th overall in the country and the 3rd CBS affiliate. At that time, just down the Street was Sun Place, the headquarters of the Baltimore Sun who founded the TV station. That top floor is now a private lounge for tenants of the building, but the TV tower atop the building is still there unused to this day. During those years, Semmes, Bowen and Semmes, a major Maryland law firm with origins in the 19th century, occupied the twenty-first floor, and later as many as four whole floors (when the firm employed almost 150 attorneys), remaining in 10 Light Street until approximately 1990, at what was called the "Baltimore Trust Building", according to the 1952 memoir of

Whittaker Chambers Whittaker Chambers (born Jay Vivian Chambers; April 1, 1901 – July 9, 1961) was an American writer-editor, who, after early years as a Communist Party member (1925) and Soviet spy (1932–1938), defected from the Soviet underground (1938), ...

, whose Semmes attorneys were Richard F. Cleveland (youngest son of President

Grover Cleveland Stephen Grover Cleveland (March 18, 1837June 24, 1908) was an American lawyer and politician who served as the 22nd and 24th president of the United States from 1885 to 1889 and from 1893 to 1897. Cleveland is the only president in American ...

) and William D. Macmillan. In 1961, the building was purchased by Maryland National Bank, successor of Baltimore Trust, and the building name was changed to "Maryland National Bank Building". Maryland National was itself purchased by

NationsBank NationsBank was one of the largest banking corporations in the United States, based in Charlotte, North Carolina. The company named NationsBank was formed through the merger of several other banks in 1991, and prior to that had been through mul ...

in 1993, and the name of the building was changed again, to "NationsBank Building". The structure then obtained its current name following the NationsBank merger with

BankAmerica The Bank of America Corporation (often abbreviated BofA or BoA) is an American multinational investment bank and financial services holding company headquartered at the Bank of America Corporate Center in Charlotte, North Carolina. The bank ...

in 1997. Major portions of the building were restored, including the copper-clad dome, which is once again floodlit at night. In December 2012, the building was acquired by a Virginia firm, Metropolitan Partnership Ltd., which plans to convert all floors above the fourth into 445 residential apartments. The lower floors of the building remained available for retail tenants.https://www.capitalgazette.com/bs-re-10-light-street-to-be-converted-to-apartments-20121203-story.html. Bank of America announced that it would close the ground floor banking center in May 2013. Miles & Stockbridge, a prominent Baltimore law firm, had maintained offices in the building since 1932 when one of the firm's founders, Clarence Miles, moved into the building. Now a portion of the ground floor is occupied by the FX Studios & Under Armour Performance Center while the majority of its remainder is employed as apartments or office space, the building now also features a penthouse.

References

External links

{{Bank of America Downtown Baltimore Residential skyscrapers in Baltimore Art Deco architecture in Maryland Office buildings completed in 1929 Bank of America buildings

Description

History

See also

References

External links