First Tennessee Bank, Memphis

Creators

Preview

Source Collection

Alan Karchmer collection, Special Collections Department, University of Memphis Libraries

Identifier

24_30.A

Description

First Tennessee Bank, Third and Madison, Memphis, Tennessee. Built in 1964. Architects: Walk Jones and Francis Mah. Photographer: Alan Karchmer. © Alan Karchmer.

Following Mies van der Rohe's Seagram Building in New York, this classic structure minimizes the impact of its mass on the street not by successive setbacks, as did early skyscrapers, but by setting the whole rectangular mass of the building well back from the street forming a broad plaza. Proportioning of facade elements is of classic Greek derivation. The ground floor walls are set back from the exterior structural columns establishing the building as a mass, elegantly resting on its base.

With his dictum "Less is more," Mies van der Rohe introduced minimalism and the expression of structural purity into the corpus of American architecture. Miesian structures are rectangular with the utmost regularity and precision in plan, elevation, and detail. This efficiency often borders on sterility. The structures are modular in plan and elevation. Rigorous distinction between 'skin' and structure allows clean expansive glass curtain walls.

Date Created

2021

Date

undated

Recommended Citation

"First Tennessee Bank, Memphis" (2021). Images. 120.
https://digitalcommons.memphis.edu/speccoll-mss-karchmera2/120