Gate (Crest)

Description

Philadelphia merchant Stephen Girard (1750-1831) established his own bank by acquiring the city's closed First Bank of the United States on South Third Street. In 1817 he embarked on an ambitious series of modifications and improvements lasting until about 1830. The bank's exterior had passageways on either side to a brick walled back garden. Girard had each passageway fronted by a pair of marble pillars installed with a pair of wrought iron gates. Peter Monet, a machine maker in Philadelphia, rendered a bill to Girard on December 25, 1817 for "making for the Bank, Railing and a Gate [and] making an ornamental piece for the top of the gate." The bill makes no mention of a gate at the opposite side of the building. However, on July 20, 1827, Philadelphia blacksmith Joseph Gatchell agreed to "make of the best materials in a complete workmanlike manner a pair of Iron Gates to be put up at the south entrance of the yard of said Stephen Girard's Bank, the said gates to be in every respect equal in point of materials, dimensions and workmanship to those at the north entrance." [Both documents survive in Girard College archives.] Both gates remained in place until sometime between 1864 and 1893. This pair was reportedly used as joists in a warehouse in the Vine Street area of Philadelphia, an ignominious fate from which they were rescued in the 1940s when the building was demolished. An antiques dealer in Pennsylvania acquired them and Henry Francis du Pont later installed them at Winterthur's South entrance gate. The National Park Service had copies of Winterthur's gates made and installed at the Bank building in 1960.