Bank

Rating:

What a room.

After more than 60 years as one of the Midwest's most inviting addresses for making deposits and applying for mortgages, who knew that beneath the Farmers and Mechanics Bank's dignified financial-institution mojo beat a higher, truer calling, as a fabulous restaurant?

Westin Hotels, for starters. It's easy to imagine the 5,000 ways this beloved landmark could have been screwed up, none of which seemed to happen under the hotel's respectful and scrupulous stewardship, which slyly reincarnates the bank's beloved 1941 Art Moderne lobby -- one of the city's most thrilling interior spaces -- into what is destined to become a new downtown crossroads.

More than once I found myself seated at a sofa near the main entrance at the appropriately named Bank, blueberry mojito in hand (more on those later) and watched, like clockwork, as obvious first-timers stepped inside, stopped dead in their tracks, slapped an awestruck look on their faces and murmured, "Wow." No kidding. Sheer volume fuels some of that reaction; a hockey rink could probably fit comfortably on the floor, and the column-free ceiling stretches a good 30 feet up. Nobody builds like this anymore. The place is enormous.

And drop-dead gorgeous. Time has been good to the dear old F&M. The building's original late-Depression budget must have gone a long, long way. The bank treated its chief asset with obvious care during the intervening decades and Westin's design team, led by Moncur Design Associates Inc. of Toronto, knows a good thing when it sees one.

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