National Register Listing

Security Savings Bank

212-214 W. 2nd St., Ashland, WI

The Security Savings Bank building is the finest existing example of commercial architecture in Ashland designed by Allan Darst Conoyer and Lew Forster Porter in the Richardsonian Romanesque style.

During the 1880s and 1890s, the population of Ashland exploded as lumber passed through this Lake Superior port city. A hamlet of 353 in 1880, Ashland grew to 9,956 in 1890, and then 13,074 in 1900. The city's commercial prosperity during this twenty-year period caused 2nd Street to become lined with superb structures of red brick and indigenous brownstone, mostly more-or-less Richardsonian Romanesque in style. Since Ashland's growth ceased and slowly ebbed to less than 10,000 in 1970, some of these original buildings have been preserved.

The successful Madison architectural firm of Conover and Porter decided to take advantage of the burgeoning construction economy of Northern Wisconsin, and in 1887 established a branch office in Ashland. The firm quickly became the largest and most successful in this area of the state, and for a period took on local associate, Horace P. Padley of Ashland. The firm's northern office remained active until 1899, when the partnership dissolved and Conover and Porter, individually, practiced almost exclusively out of Madison. The Security Savings Bank represents some of the firm's most sensitive and successful work, for many of its designs, were very utilitarian and did not attempt to achieve the esthetic quality found in this bank.

The Security Savings Bank occupied this building for a little over a decade before it went into receivership. Thereafter it has served a variety of commercial occupants.

Local significance of the building:
Listed in National Register of Historic Places in 1974.