The 1891 Farmers and Mechanics Savings Bank building in Minneapolis, Minnesota

Minneapolis, Minnesota

Minneapolis , nicknamed "City of Lakes" and the "Mill City," is the county seat of Hennepin County, the largest city in the U.S. state of Minnesota, and the 48th largest in the United States...

 is a Beaux-Arts style building that formerly served as the headquarters of Farmers and Mechanics Savings Bank. In 1942, the bank moved to a new location at 88 S. 6th St.

Farmers and Mechanics Savings Bank (1942)

The 1942 Farmers and Mechanics Savings Bank building in downtown Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States, is a former bank building that is now the home of a Westin Hotel. The building is an example of the Streamline Moderne phase of the Art Deco movement and is notable for its bold relief...

 at the corner of Sixth and Marquette.

The building was designed by the locally prominent firm of Long and Kees

Long and Kees

Minneapolis-based Long and Kees was an architectural firm that designed some of Minneapolis's most important historical buildings. It was named for its two proprietors, Franklin B. Long and Frederick Kees...

 as a one-story building. Long and Kees usually preferred the then-popular Richardsonian Romanesque

Richardsonian Romanesque

Richardsonian Romanesque is a style of Romanesque Revival architecture named after architect Henry Hobson Richardson, whose masterpiece is Trinity Church, Boston , designated a National Historic Landmark...

 style for their buildings, but deviated from this style for the bank. In 1908, architect William Kenyon designed a second-story addition that enlarged the façade while retaining the Beaux-Arts style. The exterior is faced with white limestone

Limestone

Limestone is a sedimentary rock composed largely of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different crystal forms of calcium carbonate . Many limestones are composed from skeletal fragments of marine organisms such as coral or foraminifera....

, with five piers of rusticated

Rustication (architecture)

thumb|upright|Two different styles of rustication in the [[Palazzo Medici-Riccardi]] in [[Florence]].In classical architecture rustication is an architectural feature that contrasts in texture with the smoothly finished, squared block masonry surfaces called ashlar...

 stone supporting fluted Corinthian

Corinthian order

The Corinthian order is one of the three principal classical orders of ancient Greek and Roman architecture. The other two are the Doric and Ionic. When classical architecture was revived during the Renaissance, two more orders were added to the canon, the Tuscan order and the Composite order...

 pilaster

Pilaster

A pilaster is a slightly-projecting column built into or applied to the face of a wall. Most commonly flattened or rectangular in form, pilasters can also take a half-round form or the shape of any type of column, including tortile....

s. The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places

National Register of Historic Places

The National Register of Historic Places is the United States government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects deemed worthy of preservation...

 in 1984

The building is now home to The Downtown Cabaret, a strip club

Strip club

A strip club is an adult entertainment venue in which striptease or other erotic or exotic dance is regularly performed. Strip clubs typically adopt a nightclub or bar style, but can also adopt a theatre or cabaret-style....

. Architecture critic Larry Millett

Larry Millett

Larry Millett is an American journalist and author. He is the former architectural critic for the St. Paul Pioneer Press, a daily newspaper in St. Paul, Minnesota, and the author of several books on the history of architecture in Minnesota...

writes, "If you step inside for a view of the, ahem, scenery, you'll discover a glass dome that once illuminated a 'ladies banking lobby' but is now the scene of activities not everyone would consider ladylike."