Standard Bank Building

Standard Bank Building
File:JHFMARS 142 p2+ 001 - Copy.jpg The Standard Bank Building, cnr Harrison and Commissioner Str Johannesburg
General information
Status	Complete
Type	Business-use
Location	Johannesburg, South Africa
Completed	10 November 1908
Height
Roof	102 metres (335 ft)
Technical details
Floor count	5
Design and construction
Architect	W H Stucke & W E Bannister

The Standard Bank Building (10 November 1908) was designed by Architects Stucke & Bannister. It is found in Marshalltown in the city of Johannesburg in Commissioner, Harrison and Fox streets

Design

File:JHFMARS 142 p2+p 005.jpg

An American flag flying at half mast after the death of president Warren G. Harding in August 1923

The building has a handsome stone-faced design in the neo-Baroque late Victorian style or Beaux Arts Style which was beginning to dominate the New Regent Street and Piccadilly in London at the end of the 19th century. It is a formal and stately five story building with an excess of neo-Baroque ornamentation on the facade in a rather dry, rationalized manner. It creates an impersonal, monumental impression, ideally suited to a time which liked to express the might of the British Empire. The corners are crowned by domes supported on ionic style classical columns. The corner entrance on Commissioner and Harrison Streets is dominated by two larger than life figures. Justice and Commerce sculptured by a Greek sculpture called Marigo. The building has a skeleton of steel, the walls being filled in with brick, which was clad on the outside with sawn sandstone.

Construction

Construction began in 1906 and suffered delays because frame steel orders coincided with the San Francisco earthquake. Much building material was sent to that stricken city while other customers waited. An innovation for the time was the reinforced concrete employed for the floors.