Ten stories tall, the Union National Bank Building fills your view. This ten-story Late Gothic Revival and Sullivanesque structure was completed in 1913 and was designed by Atlanta architect William Augustus Edwards. Think about its role: rather than a stand-alone bank, it was built as an office building, a choice that shows the strength of the city's early 20th-century economy.
Because it sits across the street from the South Carolina State House, the bank was able to lease office space to the state, which struggled to provide adequate office space itself — that practical relationship is part of why the building matters. On the Gervais and Main Street facades you can trace a change in taste: decorative terra cotta details were covered sometime in the 1960s and the building underwent another renovation in the 1990s. Its significance, caught between private enterprise and government, was recognized when it was added to the National Register of Historic Places on January 14, 2019.
Picture office space here once leased to the state itself, this ten-story building facing the State House across Gervais and Main.