REMEMBER: THE PUBLIC NATIONAL BANK

                                                 Archival image courtesy of NYPL 

The church that owned the old Public National Bank building at the corner of 116th and Madison could not come up with the funds for its restoration and thus was sold to a developer.  We always admired these low level historic structure for their design elements and architects with greater imaginations have added taller structures to the top of them as in the case of the Hearst building in midtown or the Union Square Hyatt.  This was not the case here and a new building has now been completed at this corner.  Check out the current photo after the jump.

There is nothing out of the ordinary at the 8-story residential but this part of 116th and Madison is starting to get a bit dull with new buildings that all look the same.  Those ground floor storefront spaces in the 32-unit development would have been more intriguing with the original structure intact but it does not really appear that preservation has been a strong point over in East Harlem since landmarking efforts are rarely enforced.