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The Mechanics' Bank and Trust Company Building is an office building located at 612 South Gay Street in Knoxville, Tennessee, United States. Built in 1907 for the Mechanics' Bank and Trust Company, the building now houses offices for several law firms and financial agencies. The building's facade was constructed with locally-quarried marble, and is designed in the Second Renaissance Revival style. In 1983, the building was added to the National Register of Historic Places for its architectural significance.〔 The Mechanics' National Bank was chartered in 1882, and moved into a building at what is now 612 South Gay that same year. Within a few months of opening, the bank's president, Thomas O'Connor, was killed in a notorious shootout. In 1907, after the bank reorganized as the Mechanics' Bank and Trust, it built the first three floors of the current Mechanics' Bank building. The Union National Bank absorbed Mechanics' Bank in 1922, and added the top two stories the following year. The building later housed a branch of the Hamilton National Bank (headquartered in the nearby Holston building). In the early 1980s, the building was home to the City and County Bank,〔 part of the Butcher banking empire, which collapsed in 1983 due to bank fraud.〔Bruce Wheeler, ''Knoxville, Tennessee: A Mountain City in the New South'' (Knoxville, Tenn.: University of Tennessee Press, 2005), pp. 167-168.〕 ==Design== The Mechanics Bank building is a six-story (five floors and a mezzanine) rectangular building that measures roughly by .〔 The building's facade (facing Gay Street) is constructed of locally-quarried Tennessee marble, while the sides and rear of the building are constructed of brick and reinforced concrete. The building originally consisted of three floors and a mezzanine. In 1923, two more floors were added, with the builders carefully following the original design scheme. An elevator penthouse was added to the roof several decades later.〔 The design of the Mechanics' Bank building is derived from the Second Renaissance Revival style. Six Ionic capitals span the building's three-bay main floor facade, with the middle two capitals resting atop marble columns that flank either side of the recessed entrance. A heavy cornice separates the main floor facade from the facade of the upper floors. The main entrance is a high archway topped by a pedimental hood. The central bay of the upper floors' facade is recessed, with balustrades spanning the recess between the first and second floors and the third and fourth floors, and a stylized cornice with a central arm-and-hammer symbol (the Mechanics' Bank symbol) above the top floor.〔 The interior of the building has been extensively remodeled, although some original features remain. The building's entry foyer contains pink marble walls, and two marble columns flank the lobby's central entrance. The lobby itself still retains some original marble wainscoting and plaster beams.〔 Nine columns border the two-story lobby of the first floor suite with crown molding and a large mezzanine above the original bank vault that has been remodeled and now serves the purpose of a kitchen. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Mechanics' Bank and Trust Company Building」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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