The Mechanics National Bank was a Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, bank founded by and geared toward mechanics. The building was built in 1836 by architect William Strickland. Now part of the Old City neighborhood of Philadelphia, the historic building is occupied by National Mechanics, a bar and restaurant.
History In 1809, Philadelphia was already known for both skilled workers and as America's main financial center, but the merchants who controlled its banks had little interest in lending to mechanics or manufacturers. So a small group of artisans and master craftsmen resolved to organize one that would be run by and for the mechanics themselves. The following January, they adopted a set of bylaws that required all directors to be mechanics currently working at their trades and prohibited mercantile investments like ships.
The bank would also be one of the first to acquire its capital from a large number of small shareholders instead of a few large investors. While the organizers bought some stock themselves, they reserved most of the 14,000 shares for a public sale at Independence Hall the next month. There wasn't enough room in the building for everyone who wanted to buy stock – according to one report, a man lost his hat and wig trying to climb in a window – and nearly 700 people were turned away. Within an hour, they had adjourned to a nearby coffeehouse and organized the Commercial Bank. By the end of the day, five more banks had been organized in the city. The pundits were skeptical. An editorial entitled "Infatuation" appeared in several newspapers:
Within weeks, the legislature had banned unchartered associations from most banking activities and the new bank temporary closed, lent most of its capital back to the shareholders, and began lobbying for a charter, which was finally granted in 1814.
For its first twenty years, the "Banking House" was a three-story brick building formerly occupied by a hat and bonnet maker (the vault was an addition in the back yard) and by 1833, it had become completely inadequate for its purpose. After a burglar took $3,995 in gold and silver one night, an inspection found the building "in a decayed state and in many parts quite insecure." Despite some hasty repairs, the bank outgrew the building within two years, temporarily expanded into the house next door and began to buy land on the opposite side of Third Street. Unfortunately, it was only able to obtain two adjacent lots, resulting in a narrow site flanked by higher buildings on both sides.
William Strickland's building
In the summer of 1836, the directors authorized "the erection of a Banking House...to be completed in a substantial manner of the best material, for $19,930." Their choice as architect and contractor was William Strickland, one of the most prominent in Philadelphia and a pioneer of the Greek Revival style who had already designed the Second Bank of the United States on Chestnut Street and was working on new buildings for the Bank of Philadelphia and Merchants' Exchange. In addition, he had personal ties to the bank, whose directors included several contractors he had worked with, as well as colleagues from the Franklin Institute and his wife's cousin.
Because of the narrow lot at 22 S. 3rd St, the Mechanics' Bank is one of Strickland's smallest buildings, but the challenge seems to have inspired him. The heavier square pilasters that support the corners of the portico instead of round columns and the especially fine stone carving (by his longtime partner John Struthers) help to keep the building from being overwhelmed by its bulkier neighbors. Because the side walls faced very narrow alleys, most of the building was a single high room in which a large skylight lit both the main banking room with its U-shaped mahogany counter and the president and cashier's offices, which were separated from the main room by lower partitions of wood paneling. The vault and second-story directors’ room occupied a narrower wing at the back.
In November 1837, the building committee reported that "the Banking House of the Mechanics' Bank is not inferior to any in the city either in its appearance, exterior or interior, nor in respect to its perfect adaptation to the use for which it has been erected." Unfortunately, their satisfaction with Strickland's architecture didn't extend to his business practices: he had sent them a bill for $3,920 in additional expenses resulting from changes to the corners of the portico and the arrangement of the vault and offices. They claimed not to have authorized most of them and refused to pay the additional money, perhaps in part because the charter limited expenditures on land and buildings for the banking house to $50,000.
Final years
By the time the bank moved into Strickland's building, the bank's character had already begun to change. The original organizers had been among the city's most successful craftsmen (most employed many apprentices and journeymen and several had sidelines as merchants as well as their trades), but most still had started as apprentices and worked alongside their employees, but starting with the 1814 charter, directors no longer had to be active mechanics, and a few merchants, "gentlemen," and professional bankers began to join the board. As manufacturing in the Industrial Revolution replaced handicraft, factory owners and managers replaced the remaining artisans and master craftsmen. The bank continued to specialize in funding the manufacturing industries and Philadelphia mechanics, continued to lead the world in building and maintaining the equipment that it required, but by the time it became part of the new federal banking system as Mechanics National Bank, it answered to mechanics’ employers, not the mechanics themselves.
The surviving records of Mechanics National Bank end in 1900. Two years later, it bought back most of its stock, and on February 16, 1903, the fifteen remaining shareholders voted to dissolve the corporation and transfer its business to Girard National Bank. Subsequent owners rented the building to various other banks until the depression; then sold it to the Norwegian Seaman's Mission, which remodeled it as a chapel and social service center for sailors until 1982 when the dwindling congregation moved to Old Swedes’ Church in South Philadelphia and sold the building at auction. After twenty-five years as the legendary Club Revival and several other bars including an ill-fated Coyote Ugly and Foggy Goggles, the building has seen a rebirth. The current tenants have chosen the historically pertinent name, National Mechanics, to make an upscale bar and restaurant where the décor and demeanor tip their respective hats to the building's original incarnation.
The front of the structure remains as Strickland built it, but the rear and interior have been greatly altered. In 1898, the architect James Windrim renovated it for the bank, replacing Strickland's vault and directors room (as well as a small office added later) with a much larger two story structure of fireproof brick and iron construction, while the church divided the main room into two stories and added additional office space at the rear in 1930 and later tenants made further changes.
Notable directors and customers
John Aitken (subscriber), Music publisher and composer
Most of the founders of the Mechanics' Bank were artisans who had served traditional apprenticeships but whose later paths set them apart from their peers. John Aitken was a silversmith in his native Scotland, but when he moved to Philadelphia in 1785, he became one of North America's first music publishers. While his competitors printed sheet music using hand-engraved metal plates, Aitken introduced the use of standardized punches to stamp notes onto the plates, a faster process which also produced more legible scores.
In 1807, Aitken opened a music store at 76 North Second Street in an odd-looking building known as "Jones’s Folly." In addition to his publishing business, he dabbled in composition (with little success) and rented the second floor to an Englishman by the name of Blake, who gave flute and "clarionet" lessons until he was visited by a group of Quaker elders and told to "stop teaching the clarionet to our boys or we will have thee put in prison."
Rudolph “Old Dutch Cleanser” Blankenburg (director), Mayor of Philadelphia
In 1911, Rudolph Blankenburg became Philadelphia's 164th mayor. A German-born dry-goods manufacturer and merchant, he had been active in local affairs since 1880 and was affectionately known as "Old Dutch Cleanser" because of his origins and zealous dedication to reform. During his four years in office, he tried to replace the political cronies appointed by predecessors like John Reyburn with trained professionals, instituted a modern civil service system with on-the-job training and standardized employee benefits, and systematized city contracts. His wife, Lucretia Longshore Blankenburg, was a prominent women's suffragist and an important reform activist in her own right.
George H. Boker (director), Playwright and poet
While almost forgotten today, George Henry Boker was a well-known poet, playwright, and diplomat in the mid-19th century. He was originally trained as a lawyer but after traveling in Europe, he was inspired to become a writer instead. He published a few books of unremarkable lyric poetry in the 1840s and then turned to drama, becoming one of the most successful American playwrights by the mid-1850s. He specialized in blank verse romantic tragedies, usually in historical European settings; his best known was the 1855 Francesca da Rimini. In the 1860s, he returned to writing lyric poetry, especially sonnets.
During the Civil War, Boker helped organize (and later became president of) the Union League to support the war effort and published Poems of the War, a collection of lyric poetry In recognition of his services, President Ulysses S. Grant appointed him Minister (Ambassador) to the Ottoman Empire in 1871 and, four years later, to Russia.
His father, Charles S. Boker, was also a director of the Mechanics' bank, and later was president of the much larger Girard Bank during the 1857-8 financial crisis. George Boker's The Book of the Dead was a response to his father's posthumous critics.
Edward H. Coates (director), Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts
Mechanics' Bank director Edward H. Coates was a businessman and art patron most notorious for his association with Thomas Eakins, perhaps the greatest American realist painter. As chairman of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts’ Committee on Instruction, Coates was instrumental in appointing Eakins as director and supported reforms like teaching anatomy from nude models instead of plaster casts. In 1883, the two served together on a University of Pennsylvania's committee to oversee the photographer Eadweard Muybridge's pioneering studies of human and animal movement. However, he soon grew uncomfortable with many of his practices, especially his use of students as models. In 1885, he commissioned "The Swimming Hole," but rejected the finished painting for its explicit and erotic depiction of male students and friends. The following year, he fired Eakins for removing a drapery from a male model in front of female students, though he continued to buy his paintings.
His brother, George M. Coates, was also a director of the bank.
Abner Davis (director), Nail factor and jailer