Perhaps you’ve been watching the news and heard a lot of coverage of the old Cass Bank building being in the crosshairs of demolition, and then at the last second it had been been saved. I thought it would be helpful to readers to explain what is going on. Cass Bank is still in business and has a nice history page you can read here. Founded in 1906, it grew rapidly. Judging from the names of the owners and employees, it was a very German affair.

It’s important to realize that Cass Bank has had four locations; the first one at 1462 Cass Avenue (obviously hence the name of the bank); almost across the street at the location shown in these photographs at 1501 Cass Avenue; at the southeast corner of North Thirteenth Street and Cass Avenue (the one in the news); and finally its current location at 13003 Hollenberg Drive in the Earth City area.

This bank was from 1915, showing how the rented building was already too small in less than a decade at its original rented headquarters that is now lost.

This bank has some Renaissance Revival tendencies, for a lack of a better way to describe it. The east facade has elements of buildings seen in Sixteenth Century Rome.

There are two wonderful glazed terracotta roundels, one with the seal of St. Louis and the other of the State of Missouri.

Amazingly, again in just over a decade the bank would see a new location.