The Union Arcade is an apartment building located in downtown

Davenport, Iowa Davenport is a city in and the county seat of Scott County, Iowa, United States. Located along the Mississippi River on the eastern border of the state, it is the largest of the Quad Cities, a metropolitan area with a population of 384,324 and a ...

, United States. The building was individually listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

in 1983 by its original name Union Savings Bank and Trust. Originally, the building was built to house a bank and other professional offices. Although it was not the city's largest bank, and it was not in existence all that long, the building is still associated with Davenport's financial prosperity between 1900 and 1930. From 2014 to 2015 the building was renovated into apartments and it is now known as Union Arcade Apartments. In 2020 it was included as a

contributing property In the law regulating historic districts in the United States, a contributing property or contributing resource is any building, object, or structure which adds to the historical integrity or architectural qualities that make the historic distri ...

in the

Davenport Downtown Commercial Historic District The Davenport Downtown Commercial Historic District is a nationally recognized historic district located in the central business district of Davenport, Iowa, United States. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2020. At th ...

History

Union Savings Bank was established in Davenport in 1891. The bank moved to its Brady Street location around the turn of the 20th century It had previously been the location of Davenport National Bank until Union Savings Bank took it over. The lower level of the present building was completed around 1915 and the upper floors of the building were completed in 1924 for $820,000 according to the designs by the Davenport architectural firm Temple & Burrows.

Hoggson Brothers Noble Foster Hoggson Sr. (1865–1939) was a builder, architect, and author in the United States. He specialized in building and planning banks in New York City. He partnered with his brother William J. Hoggson to establish Hoggson Brothers. His ...

, a New York bank construction company, was the general contractor in 1924. As the bank grew it started to acquire other banks in the city. In the 1920s it merged with Davenport Savings Bank and Scott County Savings Bank and was renamed Union Savings Bank and Trust Company. After the start of 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 ...

many banks failed or were severely weakened. One of those banks was First National Bank, which Union Savings Bank and Trust took over before the

Bank Holiday A bank holiday is a national public holiday in the United Kingdom, Republic of Ireland and the Crown Dependencies. The term refers to all public holidays in the United Kingdom, be they set out in statute, declared by royal proclamation or held ...

in 1933. The other Davenport banks who survived up to this time included:

American Commercial and Savings Bank Davenport Bank and Trust Company was for much of the 20th century the leading bank of the Quad Cities metropolitan area and the surrounding region of eastern Iowa and western Illinois. It was at one time Iowa's largest commercial bank, and the he ...

, Bechtel Trust Company,

Northwest Davenport Savings Bank Northwest Davenport Savings Bank is a historic building located in a commercial district in the old northwest section of Davenport, Iowa, United States. It has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1984. History Northwest ...

, and Home Savings Bank. The bank, however, was not one of the banks to emerge after the Bank Holiday. In 1946 a $75,000 renovation of the former banking hall created two floors of retail stores, which was when the building was renamed the Union Arcade. Davenport architectural firm Kruse & Parish designed the renovation and Tunnicliff Construction Company was the general contractor. Professional offices occupied the upper floors. Rodney Blackwell of Financial District Properties bought the Union Arcade in late 2013 for $1.65 million. In March 2014 a renovation project began to turn the building into 68 market-rate apartments with commercial space on the main level. The $16.65 million project was completed in May 2015. Three of the apartments are lofts and the rest are studios and one- and two-bedroom units. The

mezzanine A mezzanine (; or in Italian language, Italian, a ''mezzanino'') is an intermediate floor in a building which is partly open to the double-height ceilinged floor below, or which does not extend over the whole floorspace of the building, a loft ...

was converted into a resident lounge and a laundry room. The building's original marble floors were retained in the common areas, and the mail chute and historic doors were left in place for appearances.

Architecture

The building is a seven-story, L-shaped structure designed in the Neoclassical and the emerging Chicago Commercial Style. It is tall. The main façade of the building fronted Brady Street, with its secondary façade on East Third Street. It is built of

limestone Limestone ( calcium carbonate ) is a type of carbonate sedimentary rock which is the main source of the material lime. It is composed mostly of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different crystal forms of . Limestone forms whe ...

and it has a limestone foundation. The Neoclassical details are found primarily on the street level façade, which was the part of the building constructed around 1915. When it was built it had columns in the

Ionic order The Ionic order is one of the three canonic orders of classical architecture, the other two being the Doric and the Corinthian. There are two lesser orders: the Tuscan (a plainer Doric), and the rich variant of Corinthian called the composite or ...

at the street level side on Brady Street. On the north side, the columns become

pilasters In classical architecture, a pilaster is an architectural element used to give the appearance of a supporting column and to articulate an extent of wall, with only an ornamental function. It consists of a flat surface raised from the main wall ...

featuring the

Corinthian order The Corinthian order (Greek: Κορινθιακός ρυθμός, Latin: ''Ordo Corinthius'') is the last developed of the three principal classical orders of Ancient Greek architecture and Roman architecture. The other two are the Doric order ...

. The upper floors were constructed nine years after the lower level of the building. It is here that the Chicago Commercial Style is in evidence. The windows are stacked in pairs between the vertical piers and are themselves separated by decorative metal spandrel panels. with The top of the building features a heavy

cornice In architecture, a cornice (from the Italian ''cornice'' meaning "ledge") is generally any horizontal decorative moulding that crowns a building or furniture element—for example, the cornice over a door or window, around the top edge of a ...

. Kruse & Parish was the architectural firm that remodeled the building's storefront to function as the Union Arcade. It is probably at that time that the Ionic columns were removed from the building. The mezzanine level, which provides a transition to the upper levels, was also added at that time.

References

External links

{{Historic Davenport structures Office buildings completed in 1924 Neoclassical architecture in Iowa Apartment buildings in Davenport, Iowa Historic bank buildings in the United States Bank buildings on the National Register of Historic Places in Iowa National Register of Historic Places in Davenport, Iowa Individually listed contributing properties to historic districts on the National Register in Iowa