 ross Gravier Street from this corner. Occupying almost a complete city block on the other side of the street is the: - Place St Charles/First NBC Bank Building. Designed by an alliance between Moiyama & Teshima Planners of Toronto, and The Mathes Group of New Orleans, the light-pink granite-clad 53-story building was built in 1985 as the Place St Charles, a new high-rise slated to be one of the tallest in the city. It's actually New Orleans' second tallest structure, after the One Shell Square building, and is the only skyscraper in the country to combine the elements of a high-rise
with French Quarter asthetics in a singular design. The whole complex consists of a 53-story tower set back from the street, and a 3-story section on St Charles Avenue, with modernistic green-painted galleries across the facade. The structure is also noteworthy because of its location, for here stood the
St Charles Hotel, the grandest hotel in the entire South. There were actually three hotels with the same name on this site. The first was an enormous Greek revival structure designed by James Gallier in 1835, and completed in 1837. It had a monumental Corinthian-columned portico and a colonnaded cupola resembling the one on the United States capitol building. Altogether the structure rose to a height of 203 feet, and was visible from almost any point in the city.
The St Charles Hotel was built to rival the Creole-favored St Louis Hotel in the French Quarter, with luxury suites, huge dining rooms, elegant salons, fancy shops, and a popular bar. It burned down in 1851, however, and was rebuilt on the foundations almost as a replica of the original, except for the dome, which "though beautiful, was costly," said Gallier. The hotel burned a second time in 1894, but this time it was replaced with a smaller, albeit equally extravagant, 7-story steel-frame Beaux Arts building designed by Thomas Sully. This third hotel continued to be a social gathering spot for celebrities, heads-of-state, royalty, and other elites such as Presidents McKinley, Roosevelt, and Taft, and singers Sarah Bernhardt and Enrico Caruso. It was demolished in 1974,
and will continue to hold a special place in New Orleans history. Walk through the tall glass atrium within and marvel at the spaciousness of the block-long corridor leading to Carondelet and the hampton Inn, then return to the St Charles entrance, and turn left once outside. Make a right on Common Street, crossing St Charles, and walk down Common until you get to Camp Street. From the corner here, and stretching all the way down the block to the right, is a very interesting group of four architecturally unique buildings. The first one, at the corner here, is the: - Old New Orleans Bank, at 201 Camp. Looking somewhat like a castle in the middle of downtown, this red-brick and rock-faced stone, 14-story Victorian building was designed by noted architect Thomas Sully
and constructed in 1884-88 as the New Orleans National Bank. The lower floor of the commercial structure is finished with heavy-rusticated red sandstone, and has tall, arched window openings. On the corner entrance to the building is an unusual massive polished red granite column with a white stone capital festooned with grotesque faces. Sculptured red terra cotta panels with griffins are placed below the third story windows, and the roof is ornamented with an elaborate dormer with church-like decorations. Two doors down from this marvelous building is an equally lavish structure, the:
Norman Mayer Memorial Building, 211 Camp. Built on property owned by Paul Tulane, whose endowment was used to create Tulane University, the building that stands here today was built in 1900 to replace
an earlier Venetian renaissance-style cast-iron structure occupied by the Fireman's Insurance Company. The present buildingis a six-story steel-frame structure with an elaborate brick and cream-colored terra cotta exterior with bay windows in the center. The effect of the design, with its combination of cornycopias, garlands, animal heads, figures and faces, is one of animated whimsy. Next door to the Mayer Building at 217 Camp is the third of these structures, the: Teutonia Insurance Company building. Squeezed in between two taller buildings is this miniature architectural gem, constructed in the late 1880s for the Teutonia Insurance Company. It consists of three stories, the lower one a rusticated stone base with a great central arch supported by small polished dark gray granite Corinthian columns.
There are two facade pilasters at the corners extending from the second to third floors, with allegorical female heads of Teutonia, and a fanciful parapet at the roofline with a shell niche containing the figure of a scantily-clad female. She holds over her head a lion's skin, emblematic of an insurance policy. A steeply-pitched mansard roof once capped the structure. Finally, at the corner of Camp and Gravier there is the: Old Louisiana Bank & Trust Building. Its address is presently on Gravier Street, at 611, but once was on Camp Street; that entrance is filled in now. This New Orleans skyscraper of nine stories was designed by Diboll & Owen, and built in 1906 for the Canal-Louisiana Bank & Trust Company, established in 1832. The first two stories are white Bedford stone,
the stories between the second and ninth are of red brick, and the top story is done in rich terra cotta, with a terra cotta frieze and bronze cresting. From 1945 until 1995 the building's banking hall housed the International House, and in 1998 it was converted into a hotel, the International House.
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