Architecture & Finance
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bulletin Architecture & Finance 2016 eabh (The European Association for Banking and Financial History e.V.) bulletin newsletter from the eabh 2016 WEBSITE www.bankinghistory.org ISSN 2219-0643 1 bulletin | 2016 CONTENTS contents Headquarters building of Norges Bank 89 Contents The Central Bank of Norway 89 From Florence to Foster. Historical quarters of Bank Handlowy w Warszawie SA 91 The financial services and their buildings 8 Polish central banks. An architectural overview 95 Bank Austria’s historic headquarters in Vienna 14 The headquarters of Banco de Portugal. Space adventure. Moving to new headquarters A long way 97 is a test for Erste Group’s corporate culture 16 Caixa Geral de Depósitos 101 Oesterreichische Nationalbank Sustainable architecture 101 200 years of architecture 18 The headquarters of the National Bank of Romania. 105 The architectural history of the National Bank of Belgium 22 History and architecture 105 The Croatian National Bank in the Zagreb Stock Exchange building 26 The Central Bank of the Russian Federation 12 Neglinnaya Street, Moscow 110 The Bank of Cyprus building within the medieval walls of Lefkosia 29 Edifice of the National Bank of Serbia 112 From the late sixties to the 21st century. The two central buildings of the Buildings of central banks in Slovakia in historical perspective 115 Limassol Co-operative Savings Bank 31 Architecture of BBVA. The unique buildings of San Nicolás and Gran Vía 12 The Živnostenská Banka building 34 in Bilbao 119 Bank of Finland head office 36 A history of the headquarters of Banco Santander 123 The three lives of Hôtel Gaillard 38 The Banco de España building. 1882-2006 127 The BNP Paribas Mile 40 The Riksbank Building 130 An overview of BNP Paribas landmarks SEB’s building at Kungsträdgårdsgatan celebrates 100 Years 132 in Paris’s historic financial quarter 40 Bank Lombard Odier & Co Ltd at Rue De La Corraterie 133 Crédit Agricole 44 The Bank for International Settlements 134 Commerzbank and Frankfurt am Main 48 in Basel and its landmark buildings¹ 134 Taunusanlage 12, Frankfurt am Main To beautify and ornament Zurich. 136 More than just steel and concrete 51 Credit Suisse’s head office on Paradeplatz 136 The Deutsche Bundesbank. Architecture for Raiffeisen. Every bank building is unique 139 Its Architecture and Art 53 The Swiss National Bank’s head office in Zurich. 141 The new ECB premises. Architecture and design 56 A new feature on the city’s familiar skyline 141 Metzler Bank in Frankfurt/Main: Festina lente. A courtly home. Münzhof, UBS’s head office 146 Only five headquarter locations in over 340 years 58 Making and Meaning of a Versicherungs-Palast.The historical headquar- Sal. Oppenheim Head Office in Cologne 61 ters of Zurick Insurance Company 149 Banks in Leipzig 64 Unpopular icon of the 1960s. The headquarters of de Nederlandsche Bank The main building of the Magyar Nemzeti Bank 66 in Amsterdam 153 1893. A new home for the central bank. 69 The Dutch architect Berlage and Nationale-Nederlanden 157 The Bank of Italy’s head office in Via Nazionale 69 Property, finance and architecture. The Imperial Ottoman Bank’s branch The historical premises of the Opere Pie di San Paolo in Turin 73 buildings 159 Generali’s real estate between the end İşbank’s architectural approach. 164 of the XIX century and the Great War 75 Three headquarters buildings 164 The historical headquarters 75 Underneath the Bank of England 167 How the historical archives of large banking groups manage architectur- Barings and its buildings 170 al heritage. Banking on its own architects. The case of Intesa Sanpaolo 79 National Provincial Bank in the interwar years 172 Naples Palazzo Ricca. A Solid Foundation. 176 A bank since 1616 81 The St. Louis Fed’s Building 176 The UniCredit headquarters in Milan 83 Architecture of a venerable institution. 178 The Banque Centrale du Luxembourg 87 DESIGN EDITORS LANGUAGE EDITOR Richard McBurney, Grand Creative, Carmen Hofmann, Gabriella Massaglia Jonathan Ercanbrack www.grand-creative.com eabh (The European Association for [email protected] KEY TITLE Banking and Financial History e.V.) Bulletin (European Association Hanauer Landstrasse 126 -128, D-60314 SUBMISSIONS Frankfurt am Main, Germany Banking and Financial History) [email protected] bulletin | 2016 2 3 bulletin | 2016 EDITORIAL editorial Dear colleagues and friends, Most financial institutions’ buildings are landmarks. Placed in the heart of city centres, they occupy prominent spaces in our urban environments. They are built to last. ‘Built on striking locations by famed architects using the lat- est techniques, they were also seen as a highly distinctive architectural expression that could show off the modernity of the bank.’1 As we will see in this edition, many institutions are built like palaces with features that include elegant facades, grand stairways, marble sculptures of allegorical figures and cathe- dral-like groined arches. They follow the ideals of Italian Renaissance or Historical Romanticism. One example is Zurich Insurance’s building: ‘The building ful- fils its purpose of housing the headquarters of a great and is: ‘the compromise of tradition and modernity, functionali- successful company. The massive overall structure, together ty and monumentality, austerity and adornment, and even with the palace-like features assembled in the middle broad- manages to blend features of the Italian Renaissance with cast seriousness, wealth and power. These qualities are of the hipped roof commonly found in northern Europe … this special importance for an insurance company that basically style, typical of the era, offered cultural orientation in an age trades in trust: the promise to pay significant sums of money of uncertainty’.5 sometime in the future.’ 2 It is interesting to see how the buildings presented in this col- Financial buildings – central bank buildings (which do hold lection reflect the time they where built in, the corporate gov- the gold reserve of their respective countries) in particular ernance structure and commonly shared values of societies – often reflect the idea of strength, stability and continui- and citizens. Further, the nuanced differences of national ide- ty. More than that, they are supposed to endure and resist als are strikingly obvious almost everywhere. For example, financial and other crises. the German Bundesbank is built in a ‘brutal style: an honest architecture.’6 It seems impossible to imagine how German ‘Despite the tumultuous decades that followed crises, values could be better reflected. Of course these statements upheavals and wars, social revolution, political and econom- only go so far before they become their own cliché. But as ic discontinuities, the National Bank’s building has remained we all know, clichés come from somewhere – there may be one of the rare edifices whose original appearance and pur- a grain of truth. ‘Craftsmanship and precision (as expressed pose has been well preserved.3 in the building of the Swiss National Bank) embody the core facets of Swiss national identity.’7 Isn’t that what we all would As a matter of course these ideals and perceptions differ consider ‘Swiss’? amongst regions and change over time – sometimes there is a mixing of the old and the new. This is the case in the Neth- Financial Buildings mirror an important aspect of urban envi- erlands, where, in the 1960s, it was thought that: ‘a bank that ronments. Moreover, they are closely linked to the urban and issues and circulates money on behalf of the government economic development of cities and countries. The post-war should not be too grand or ostentatious’.4 mindset of innovation that dominated the optimistic 1950s and 60s - when Europe was rebuilt after the war- is reflect- The Swiss National Bank’s view about their building is that it ed in the buildings created at the time. Likewise, the urban development of financial centres like Zurich, London and 1 Christiane de Fleurieu.The BNP Paribas Mile Frankfurt is inseparably associated with the construction 2 Christofer Stadlin. The Making and Meaning of a ’Versicherungs Palast’. 3 Sonja Jerkovic, Sasa Ilic and Vladimir Bulajvic. Edifice of the National 5 Evelyn Ingold. The Swiss National Bank’s head office in Zurich: a new Bank of Serbia. feature on the city’s amiliar skyline. 4 Gert Eijkelboom. Unpopular icon oft he 1960s. The headquaters of the 6 Rolf Herget. Die Deutsche Bundesbank. It’s architecture and art. Nederlandsche Bank. 7 Evelyn Ingold.. bulletin | 2016 4 works financed by the same industry. its business in an open, transparent and integrated way from the way in which its headquarters are presented to the wider There was a clear trend during the 1980s to mix the ideals of public and integrated into the urban landscape? strength and stability one would expect from an institution that trades in trust with the realization that dynamism and Which stories can buildings’ transformations tell about the flexibility are key factors for success in this business as well – changes and renewals of countries and places over time? and hence these values need to be associated with the insti- tutions’ domicile. This volume aims to be a starting point. We want to start a collection of cases and stories of financial institutions – in There are so many particularities to be discovered, like the this case, European financial institutions – in order to get (intentional or coincidental) choice of location: for instance, a sense of the bigger picture: how does finance change the the European Central Bank is located exactly opposite of way we work? How does finance change the way we live? Or where all other financial institutions are based along the riv- is it occasionally the other way around: can the way we live er Main - or the fact that Rothschild’s headquarters always transform finance? have been (and probably always will be) in the same spot in St.