Keeping Track of Lost Philly Artwork - New York Times 28 August, 1986

Second National Bank, 4300 block Frankford Ave, western side of street, no date. Built I think in 1919. Source: John Rowe

Discussing this old bank with John Rowe today, Provident National Bank in it's last gasp. Saw an article in the NYT back then on the ferry and clipped it out and saved it and it survived many moves. The discussion made me remember this article and search for it on the Internet.

I was in that bank as a kid once with my father. Remember the stained glass ceiling, always remembered it.  I ended up emailing this guy, the owner of the salvage company in the article, somewhere in a fuzzy memory timeline of something like a decade ago, plus or minus a year or two. 

He kindly replied and told me the stained glass ceiling ended up in a steakhouse in Washington DC, the name of which I do not now remember. He also stated that that steakhouse was going out of business and was not certain if the ceiling was still in that building or if it had been sold off to some other buyer...

One Week and $29,000 to Strip a Bank

except:

...Mr. Elkind, the owner of Lost City Arts, a Manhattan company that sells architectural artifacts, was surveying the interior of what was once the headquarters of the Second National Bank of Philadelphia: brass chandeliers, molded glass lamps, stone benches with velvet seats, iron grillwork, plaster rosettes, mahogany paneling, the ornate gallery clock behind the eagle and, 40 feet above him, 100 panels of stained-glass ceiling.

Anything he could remove belonged to him. For $29,000, he bought the salvage rights to the building, which is in the Frankford section of Philadelphia, a few blocks west of the Delaware River.

But there was a catch. ''It's like a supermarket sweepstakes,'' Mr. Elkind said. ''I have one week to fill the cart.''

Mr. Elkind, meanwhile, has been trying to sell pieces of the bank's interior, generally by investing decorative objects with functional uses. Four large stained-glass windows from the bank's foyer were turned into doors and sold for $800 apiece. Ten pieces of cast-iron grillwork have been turned into coffee tables, priced at $1,200 apiece.

The entire stained-glass ceiling -100 panels in a 40-foot-by-20-foot mosaic that washed the building in soft hues of pink, green, yellow and blue - has been sold to a Washington restaurateur. Mr. Elkind's asking price was $35,000; he said he sold it for a few thousand dollars less when the buyer took it on sight and agreed to cart it away himself.

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