Bank Teller’s Wicket

This lyrical bank teller’s wicket (or grille) was originally one of eight installed in the National Farmer’s Bank in Owatonna, Minnesota. The wickets screened the tellers from the public. Louis Sullivan, a leading American architect, and George Elmslie, his chief draftsman, designed the bank structure as well as its inner and outer ornamentation. The building is a celebrated example of Prairie School architecture, a movement of which Frank Lloyd Wright was the most famous adherent.

The swirling foliage found on the wicket was a unifying decorative motif throughout the entire bank (see illustration). Sullivan believed that ornament should be a metaphor for the inner vitality and function of a building. Elmslie had a gift for complementing Sullivan’s ideas with ornament of the utmost delicacy and grace.

The wickets were removed, along with terracotta ornamentation, when the building underwent remodeling in the 1940s.