Southeast National Bank (Bank of Chester County)

The arrival of the West Chester railroad stimulated a round of building including this powerful Doric-styled treasury for the first bank in Chester County (founded 1814). Walter's perspective drawing shows a tough, granite facade of four massive Doric columns carrying a pediment, all on a raised base in the Roman manner. Walter and his mason Findley Highlands signed the interior of the lintel spanning the portico. The side elevation reveals a plan derived from Benjamin Henry Latrobe's demolished Bank of Pennsylvania with a central banking room and equal halfvolumes to the front and rear. To complement the bank, and perhaps as an inducement to William Darlington to modernize his adjacent house (see CH8), the same perspective showed Darlington's house reclad in a Greek Revival scheme, but this was never executed. In the early twentieth century, the plain rear office block of the bank was rebuilt; the bronze front doors are of a similar date.