Manufacturers Hanover Trust Company Building

Completed in 1954, this sleek International Style landmark was the first bank in the U.S. designed in this modernist typology. It was conceived by Charles Evans Hughes III and Gordon Bunshaft of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), with interior design by Eleanor H. Le Maire and artworks by Harry Bertoia. Its four-story glass façade with recessed upper levels gives the illusion of floating floors, embracing transparency and inviting public interaction—a radical departure from traditional masonry bank buildings.

The lobby remains a showcase of minimalist elegance: luminous ceilings, open mezzanine, and a street-facing stainless-steel vault door designed by Henry Dreyfuss, blending industrial aesthetics with customer engagement. The glass walls and cantilevered upper levels not only liberate visual mass but also symbolize the bank’s openness—a message that attracted 15,000 visitors in its opening week.

Interesting Facts

• First U.S. bank in International Style, sparking a wave of glass-walled branches in the 1950s–60s.

• Awarded Architectural League’s Gold Medal and Municipal Art Society Plaque (1955) and Fifth Avenue Association Award (1956)

• Interior landmarked in 2011, recognizing the banking hall, mezzanine, vault, transparent design, and Bertoia sculpture installation 

• Sculptor Henry Bertoia’s steel wall installation on the second floor was controversially removed but remains historically significant