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Standard
Bank Building
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Location
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Harare, CBD | |
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Designers
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J.A. Christie & T. Sladdin | ||
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Date
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1911 | ||
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Original
Client
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Standard Bank, Commercial bankers | ||
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Style
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Classical | ||
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Discussion
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The
building was designed and built in 1911 by J.A. Cope-Christie and T. Sladdin
as a three-storey structure, including the extensive basement vault and
single storey Assay Office towards the rear. The ground floor housed the
banking hall and offices, as well as a retail tenancy on the west end.
Access to the leasable Standard Chambers on the first floor was provided
through a lobby with a staircase on the extreme west end.
The north-facing frontage is dominantly punctuated by rusticated pilasters that form architraves to the ground floor door and window openings. The architrave surrounds are capped by triangular heads incorporating a keystone detail, picked up again over the main entrance arch and inside the broken pediment at parapet level. Small rectangular mezzanine windows sit below a string course supported on pairs of Ionic scroll brackets, above which, pairs of Ionic pilasters frame pairs of tall sash windows and glazed doors, each with a balustraded balcony. In contrast, the other (east facing) frontage along Orr Street is in Peter Jackson's words 'effectively a two-dimensional wrap around'. When D'Arcy Cathcart re-modelled the building in 1939, the façades were retained, but the banking hall was extended towards the rear of the property, and a large pendentive dome, with a coloured glass lantern apex introduced to diffuse light down through the centre. The dome is supported on triangular piers at the pendentive corners, with two intermediate Tuscan columns on large pedestals on three sides, and the rear of the bank forms the fourth side. A 'horse shoe' mezzanine partly supported on pilasters abutting the side columns was introduced around the enlarged banking hall. An elevator and hoist was built in, which remains in use to this day, while a more modern lift was installed when Standard Chartered Bank moved back into the building in later years. Preserved as an historic building, the Standard Building sits well at the head of Harare's busiest retail malls - First Street - a pleasant and well-maintained architectural anchor. Ref. The Author |
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Web
Resources
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Credits
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Peter Jackson - Historic Buildings of Harare (1986) . |
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