927 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia PA 1887-88, 1895-97; demolished
As originally erected, the City Trust building contained twenty-eight rental offices, in addition to its own quarters. The company's directors included a host of former Eyre and Sims associates, including Eyre's brother Lincoln, clients J. A. and A. C. Sinn, Charles M. Swain, and Joseph M. P. Price. In 1889 a critic in the American Architect and Building News cited the City Trust building's smooth surfaces and deliacte form as a reproof to various quarry-faced commercial edifices, asking how their makers "who see every day as they walk down Chestnut Street such good work as is on the City Trust Building should continue to give orders for great quantities" of that inferior material.
In 1895 Eyre collaborated with Frank Miles Day & Brother to enlarge the building, dispensing with some of the more precious ornamentation, and relying more on a unifying smoothness and effective grouping of openings.
Preliminary perspective, ca. 1887 [source unknown]
Lower facade before alteration [photo: ca. 1890]
Perspective, 1887 [Builder & Decorator, Sept. 1887]
Sketch plan, June 1888 [Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Franklin Fire Insurance surveys, 0:67705]
Interior [James F. Lynd, History and Growth of the City Trust, Safe Deposit and Surety Company of Philadelphia (Philadelphia, 1897)]
Perspective, 1895 [Archtl. Archives, UP: 01.087.001]
Elevation, 1895 [Archtl. Archives, UP: 01.087.002]
Front as altered, 1895-96 [Moses King, Philadelphia and Notable Philadelphians (New York, 1902)]