Ohio jewel box bank 2
July 1, 2026 at 5:01 PM by Dr. Drang
Yesterday I visited the Home Building Association Bank in Newark, Ohio, a Louis Sullivan jewel box bank built in 1914. It’s currently owned by the Licking County Foundation (oh, grow up), which restored it at considerable cost over several years and reopened it to the public last fall.
As you can see from the photo above, the Old Home differs from the other jewel box banks in that its exterior is clad entirely in terra cotta—it’s not mostly brick with terra cotta accents. But the accents still manage to stand out.
Let’s not forget the lions, which we’ve seen before. Like the Sidney and Grinnell banks, this one has a protective lion with wings and a shield.
And like the Sidney bank, it has a couple of lion heads with pipes in their mouths to drain rainwater.
The pipes could be a little more subtle.
This is a pretty small building, so when you walk in the door on the east side, you’re put in a fairly narrow space.
Not as narrow as it used to be for visitors to the bank. Near the entrance is this photo from the early days, showing how the teller areas took up the northern half of the space:
The serpentine flooring that runs east-west along the south half of the building is original, which you can see if you compare the vein patterns in my photo and the old one.
The stenciling on the ceiling and walls is mostly original, as evidenced by the discoloration and missing paint in some areas.
The colored window panels on the south wall are original, as are the mechanisms that used to open them. The panels don’t open now because we have air conditioning, and it’s better to keep them sealed.
The benches and check-writing desks along the south wall are original and were found in the building’s basement.
I find the detail on the post highly reminiscent of Frank Lloyd Wright:
Wright worked for Sullivan early in his career but had been gone for over twenty years by the time the Old Home was designed. I don’t know if this was a typical Sullivan detail or whether he was being influenced by his former apprentice.
The basement currently has a handful of old building artifacts: pieces of broken terra cotta, original lighting fixtures, doorknobs, alarm bells, teller cage grills, and safe deposit boxes.
There’s also an odd panel with wiring (at the bottom of the second photo) that looks a lot like a printed circuit board.
Finally, in the Foundation’s office space on the second floor is this gorgeous Sullivan drawing of the building’s south elevation:
Fun fact: the original boiler room was just outside the footprint of the building, under the sidewalk that ran along the east side. Second fun fact: the locker doors shown in the Women’s Room at the west end of the basement are still in the basement but currently decorating a wall.
The building’s drawings are at the Ryerson and Burnham Library at the Art Institute. They’re digitized and available to download, but at a pretty low resolution. Too bad.