The Bank of Pennsylvania at Philadelphia

This watercolour by the architect shows the Bank of Pennsylvania, built between 1789 and 1800, and unfortunately destroyed 60 years later.

This building was a quantum leap in American architecture. Its structure was laconic in its simplicity, and composed of a long rectangle whose two ends featured Greek-Ionic temple fa�ade. The interior space was vaulted with a dome after the Pantheon. The beauty of the building lay in the harmonization of its volumes and the subtle design of the fa�ades. Its central hall - the first in America to feature a stone vault - constituted a grandiose setting for the bank’s business.