Gotham Hall

Ruth and I went to wedding on Saturday night at a place called Gotham Hall. It was really an architecturally fascinating place. Unfortunately, we didn't take any pictures ( Ruth left the house without her camera, which is kinda like Superman leaving the house without his cape ). However, if you click on the link in the first sentence, you'll see what I'm talking about. The place looks like a Roman Temple. The room is a huge oval ( probably about 75 feet by 125 feet - It's hard to tell - you can check out the pictures on the website and judge for yourself ), and it had 70 foot high domed ceiling ( see photo from the website below ).


I also couldn't help but notice that there were a bunch of aphorisms carved into the walls. What I found odd ( initially ) was that almost all of these sayings has something to do with money. For example:

“Waste neither time nor money but use both for your own and your neighbor’s good.”

“There is no gain so sure as that which results from economizing what you have.”

“It is what we save rather than what we earn that ensures a competency for the future.”

So, I'm sitting there during the wedding ceremony, trying to figure the story behind this place. As I said, the place looked like a temple, but it seemed to be a temple to money. It was like a giant, opulent, secular temple of wealth.

Eventually, I found out that the place was a former bank. It was actually the former main branch of The Greenwich Savings Bank ( built between 1922 and 1924). So that explained the aphorisms of wealth, but I was still fascinated by just how impressive the architecture was. You really don't see impressive architecture in modern bank buildings . Of course, it isn't really that unusual to find impressive architecture in old bank buildings. I think those old banks were designed to be impressive in order to inspire confidence in prospective clients. Back in the early days of banks, I'm sure it was a rather radical idea to hand your money over to a stranger for safe-keeping. I'm sure lots of people thought that keeping their money in a mattress at home would be a safer option. So, banks spent lots of money to build incredibly impression structures in order to convince people that a bank was safe place to put your money.

Of course, there was no FDIC insurance back then, so people who put their money in mattresses in 1924 ( 5 years before the Great Depression ) probably made out better than those who put their money in the impressive-looking banks ( I'll let the reader decide how this might related to what's happening in the financial world today ).

In any case, Ruth and I had a great time. We love being with the boys, but it's nice to have a night out every once in a while ( Ruth's Dad looked after the kids ). There was all sorts of music played at the wedding, and one song in particular reminded me a story from my youth. I made a YouTube video about that story, so you can click on the video below if you'd like to hear it.



Rich