Yorkville Bank

History and architecture

The Yorkville Bank building, an Italian Renaissance Revival structure designed by architect Robert Maynicke and constructed in 1905, served for more than 85 years as a banking center for the Yorkville neighborhood of Manhattan’s Upper East Side. The opening of the Second and Third Avenue elevated railways in the 1870s ushered in a period of urbanization for the neighborhood, bringing with it middle-class row house and apartment development. By the turn of the century, Yorkville had become a destination for waves of German, Hungarian, and Czechoslovakian immigrant families looking to escape the overcrowded tenement districts of Manhattan’s Lower East Side.

The Yorkville Bank first established itself on the northeast corner of Third Avenue and East 85th Street in 1893, and its original stockholders were largely German or of German descent. In 1905, the bank hired Robert Maynicke, an architect born in Germany and trained at Cooper Union, to design the dignified four-story granite, limestone, brick, and terra-cotta bank and office building. Maynicke worked for noted architect George B. Post before co-founding the firm Maynicke & Franke in 1895, and is responsible for the design of the Germania Bank Building (1898-1899) at 190 Bowery, a designated New York City Landmark.

In 1923-24, the structure was expanded by architect P. Gregory Stadler with the addition of one-and-a-half bays on both street facades, intended to blend seamlessly with Maynicke’s original design. The result is an elegant palazzo-type building featuring tall arched openings on the ground story separated by full-height pilasters and flanked by delicate roundels; two pairs of massive cast-bronze entrance doors with panels depicting Classical allegorical figures and motifs; vertically continuous terra-cotta window surrounds ornamented with pediments, scrolled keystones, and metopes; and bold cornices at the first and fourth stories.

By 1990 the building had ceased functioning as a bank, and subsequently minor changes were made to the building’s exterior to accommodate new commercial tenants. After 107 years, the Yorkville Bank building remains a significant reminder of Yorkville’s once prominent German-American community.