Glasgow merchants John and Robert Lewis did not face much competition when they opened a bank in a corner of their general store in 1891. Their bank was the only one within over two hundred miles. Despite an initial lack of experience, the Lewis brothers successfully steered the enterprise through economic shoals that doomed many other Montana banks: the panics of 1893 and 1907 and the agricultural depression of the 1920s. During Glasgow’s boom years, the bank thrived, moving first to a brick building in 1900 and then, amidst the homesteading boom, to this Beaux Arts business block. National banks, prohibited from investing in real estate other than their own buildings, often constructed banks with surplus office space. First National Bank of Glasgow was no exception. Designed by prominent St. Paul architects Charles Buechner and Henry Orth, this 1914 building housed retail stores and the bank on the first floor and business offices and an apartment for Robert Lewis on the second floor. The two-story building displays the symmetrical façade and exuberant ornamentation associated with the Beaux Arts style: entry porches with roofs supported by graceful Corinthian columns, second-floor balconies, elaborated pilasters, and decorative terra-cotta detailing. Built on the community’s busiest street, both for security to deter bank robbers and for customer convenience, the building helped mark Glasgow’s coming of age. Its architecture expressed a solidity, stability, and grandeur that symbolized safety and permanence, both for the bank and for the community itself.
]]>Interest in Spanish Mission architecture reached its height in 1915, after the Panama California Exposition popularized the style far beyond the Southwest. Building in the highly recognizable style allowed small town boosters to project a modern, cosmopolitan image. No wonder the premier Montana architectural firm of Link and Haire included colorful terra-cotta detailing, decorative brickwork, and high, shaped parapets—all Mission style elements—in their design for this three-story building, headquarters of the Rundle Title and Abstract Company. The firm's principal, land locator Sidney Rundle, was one of Glasgow's biggest boosters, and his fortune was tied directly to the area's ability to attract homesteaders. His up-to-date building became the center of Glasgow commerce and recreation. Its basement housed a billiards room, bowling alley, and five-chair barber shop with a Turkish bath steam cabinet and two showers, where customers could clean themselves up for a night on the town. Occupying the first floor were ten retail establishments, boasting modern display cases "after the fashion of the big office buildings in the largest cities" and electric lights that illuminated "every nook and corner." Offices, the abstract company's fireproof vault, and club rooms for the use of the city's businessmen filled the second floor. A forty-room hotel, later converted into apartments, topped the building. The Glasgow Courier moved into the business block after 1920. The renowned Sam Gilluly covered Fort Peck Dam's construction and the rise of Glasgow Air Base from his office here during his thirty-year tenure as the Courier's legendary editor.
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