We recently came across an old check from the People's Bank of New Orleans that features a wood engraved image of the bank building formerly located at 207 Decatur Street/507 Iberville Street in the Second Municipal District. Opened in August 1877, the structure served the bank's purposes until it relocated to Thomas Sully's Morris Building in the early twentieth century.
The structure was designed by a succession of architect-surveyors, first by Jules A. D'Hemecourt (†1880) and then finished by Stephen J. Turpin. Motherwell M. Bell served as the contractor, and Harry H. Dressel (†1905), the scenic artist who had his studio on Iberville (then Customhouse), painted the interior fresco panels that included personifications of Industry and Commerce, and a depiction of the Steamboat Natchez.(1)
(1)"The People's Bank." The Daily Picayune (5 August 1877) p. 1.
Images above: T. Fitzwilliam & Co., printers. Peoples Bank of New Orleans checks, c. 1900-1907. Full view and detail of People's Bank building located at 207 Decatur Street. Guy Seghers Office Records, "7th District, Square 179 (Carrollton 66-A)," Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.
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