New Virginia National Bank Building from Water Street, December 2, 1966
Artist
Carroll H. Walker
(American, 1904 - 1990)
CultureAmerican
Date1966
MediumGelatin silver print
DimensionsOverall, Image: 7 1/4 × 9 11/16 in. (18.4 × 24.6 cm)
Overall, Support: 8 × 9 7/8 in. (20.3 × 25.1 cm)
Overall, Support: 8 × 9 7/8 in. (20.3 × 25.1 cm)
Credit LineGift of Carroll H. Walker
Object number67.40.165
Not on view
Label TextMain Street Looking East from Bank of Commerce Building, January 3, 1962, 1962 Gift of Carroll H. Walker 67.40.119 Main Street, October 14, 1966, 1966 Gift of Carroll H. Walker 67.40.94 New Virginia National Bank Building from Water Street, December 2, 1966, 1966 Gift of Carroll H. Walker 67.40.165 When it opened in 1967, the 24-story, 308-foot-tall Virginia National Bank Headquarters building was the tallest structure in the state of Virginia. The company was formed in 1963 when Norfolk’s National Bank of Commerce and Charlottesville’s People’s National Bank of Central Virginia merged. To symbolize the new bank’s prominence, its executives hired the renowned architectural firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill to design its headquarters in the late International style, recognized by the building’s emphasis on volume, regularity, and proportion. Its exterior grid frames out 2,243 windows with cast concrete coffers cladded in white quartz. The building sits on a poured concrete basement, which housed the bank’s vault, and the structure is supported by about 700 pilings, the sinking of which required the removal of the nearby Confederate Monument. When it was built, officials hailed it as a symbol of “Norfolk’s progressive spirit.”
Carroll H. Walker
1965
