United 25 – Cleveland, OH

Executive summary

THE WEST SIDE’S GRANDEST ADDRESS Opened in 1925, the nine-story, $1.5 million United Bank Building instantly became the tallest and largest commercial building on Cleveland’s west side. It was among the last of the great classical bank buildings raised across the city in the 1910s and 1920s — a golden age for Cleveland banking, fueled by the city’s emergence as a major industrial center and its 1914 selection as one of just twelve cities in the nation to house a branch of the newly created Federal Reserve Bank.

Its namesake, the United Banking & Trust Company, was a homegrown west side institution with roots reaching back to the 1880s, and its new headquarters was built to project strength and permanence on the neighborhood’s most prominent corner.

That era ended abruptly. Many of Cleveland’s banks did not survive the stock market crash of October 1929 and the Depression that followed, and United Banking & Trust was among the casualties — merging into Central National Bank just one month after the crash. Yet while the institution vanished, the building endured, anchoring West 25th and Lorain through every chapter of the neighborhood’s history since.

Later home to county offices, the building stands today as a rare window into Cleveland at the