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Sometimes it seems as if every corner in Detroit has an old bank. These imposing buildings might imply stability and permanence, were it not for the fact that the institutions they were built for so clearly deserted the city’s neighborhoods long ago. Still, that these buildings have often outlived all of their neighbors shows a  permanence of a different sort. It’s also worth considering that by far the biggest re-use of these beautiful old buildings is as places of worship. So maybe they still stabilize the neighborhoods in their own way.

The banks in this photo essay are obviously small scale "morphs" of the Peoples State Bank building in downtown Detroit. That the bank wanted the personality of their central office to symbolize the confidence with which people could bank their money is made clear by the wording of the bank’s entry in the 1921 Detroit directory.

"Standing among Detroit’s great office structures, The Peoples State Bank Building is conspicuous for its architectural beauty, its simple dignity, its effect of stability. It is a cornerstone of Detroit’s financial life.

Here is practiced that sober restraint on enthusiasm, that wise encouragement to integrity, enterprise and thrift ….."

This confidence was illusory. Few of the buildings pictured here survived as banks through the liquidation of the First National Bank of Detroit (which the Peoples State Bank had become part of) during the Michigan banking crisis of 1933. In fact by 1935, only one of the branch offices pictured was still operating as a bank.

Beautiful as they are, it’s hard not to look at Detroit’s many abandoned banks as, first and foremost, symbols of a system that failed. In particular, it’s hard to overlook what Thomas Sugrue, in his well known study of post-war Detroit, describes as "two of the most important, interrelated, and unresolved problems in American history", that capitalism generates economic inequality, and that African Americans have disproportionately borne the impact of that inequality.

McKim, Mead and White

Fort and Shelby, Detroit

"The forgotten offspring of Stanford White"

A photo essay by

Steve Panton

Chene and Theodore

Fenkell and Dexter

Forest and Cadillac

Grand River and Dundee

Gratoit and Hickory

Harper and Townsend

Jefferson and Phillip