National Bank of North Philadelphia

The National Bank of North Philadelphia is an Art-deco skyscraper designed by William H. Lee, and built between 1926 and 1933 in Philadelphia, PA.

National Bank of North Philadelphia is not the only name you might know this building by though. Between 1930 and it was also known as Beury Building.

Its precise street address is 3701 N. Broad Street, Philadelphia, PA. You can also find it on the map here.

The National Bank of North Philadelphia is a structure of significant importance both for the city of Philadelphia and the United States as a nation. The building embodies the distinctive characteristic features of the time in which it was built and the Art Deco style. Because of that, the National Bank of North Philadelphia was officially included in the National Register of Historic Places on May 20^th 1985.

The building underwent a major restoration between 1922 and 1924. The architect commissioned to undertake this restoration was SgRA Architecture.

William H. Lee was the architecture firm in charge of the architectural design.

The National Bank of North Philadelphia can be categorized as an Art-deco building.

The National Bank of North Philadelphia was completed in 1933, right when the Art Deco movement was at its peak, so it kind of went with the trend at that time.

The National Bank of North Philadelphia uses a frame structure made of steel columns and concrete slabs.

A frame structure uses a combination of beams and columns to sustain the building's weight. The walls in this case are non-load bearing, which allows for more flexibility when distributing the interior spaces.

The facade is a non-load bearing masonry facade. This type of facade became common during the period when buildings, especially taller ones, transitioned from load-bearing wall systems to frame structures.

Frame structures allowed facades to be independent from the building's frame, enabling the use of lighter materials and larger openings. However, it took some time for architects to incorporate these new posibilities into their designs, and so for a while they simply replicated the look and feel fo buildings people where used to seeing.

From an aesthetic point of view, the facade features a base with 3 levels which is clad in limestone combined with an elegant decorative ironwork along the street elevation in some parts and an ornamental terracotta in others. The entrance arch was adorned with limestone panels protecting a double-leaf metal door flanked by flat glass side panels.