Iowa jewel box bank 3
September 6, 2025 at 1:00 PM by Dr. Drang
I was in Cedar Rapids Wednesday afternoon to see the final Louis Sullivan jewel box bank in Iowa. It was kind of disappointing but still had some nice details.
The first disappointment was that the bank is now a restaurant with the 80s-style name of Peppercorn.1 This means the interior will be very different from the original. I say “will be” because the second disappointment was that the restaurant was closed, I couldn’t see the interior for myself. I thought about killing a couple of hours around Cedar Rapids and having dinner at Peppercorn, but it just didn’t seem worth it. I could see the true Sullivan details on the exterior.
Which leads to the third disappointment. The decorative border around the entranceway is missing. You can see a slightly different color in that area where the border used to be.
The now-missing entrance details can be seen on the building’s Wikipedia page, in a photo taken about 20 years ago.
Let’s move on to the good stuff. There are several nice terracotta accent pieces on the front and side façades.
At the time of construction, the bank’s name was People’s Savings Bank, and you can see the stylized initials in the center of the piece. The rough texture is carried through on the horizontal pieces under the windows and on some other accent pieces above the windows.
The square terracotta decorations on the chimneys are geometric and also have that rough texture on the outside surfaces.
I like the changing depth of the central diagonal lines. They start out nearest to us at the corners but duck under the other diagonals as they run into the middle diamond.
You can see all but the lower bit of the stained glass windows on the front façade.
The figures on the tops of the pilasters are grotesque lions. I like these more than the gilded and less stylized lions at the entrance of the Grinnell bank.
The photos on the Wikipedia page show that both the square grille and the lions used to be part of the decoration above the entrance.
Finally, there’s the historic landmark plaque in the doorway.
Eventually, I’m going to travel east to see the three jewel box banks in Ohio and Indiana. I’m holding off until the restoration of the one in Newark, Ohio, is finished.
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Strictly speaking, if this were the 80s, Peppercorn would be the surname of the fictional owner, and the restaurant would be something like R.J. Peppercorn’s. Close enough. ↩