International Trust Company Building
- Architect
- William G. Preston
- Year
- 1893
- Style
- Beaux-Arts
- City
- Boston, MA
The International Trust Company Building rose in 1892-93 at 39-47 Milk Street to a design by William Gibbons Preston, one of Boston's prominent local architects, for a trust company founded in 1879. It's an early Boston example of the Beaux-Arts style and, structurally, an early prototype of skeleton-frame construction. The Boston Landmarks Commission designated it a Boston Landmark in 1978, and it was listed on the National Register the following year.
the building
Skeleton frame beneath Beaux-Arts skin. The nine-story building carries its loads on a frame of load-bearing concrete piers with floors supported by steel I-beams, an early structural experiment wrapped in an exterior finished with Indiana limestone and Quincy granite.
Sculpture by Max Bachman. The Beaux-Arts facade is ornamented with statues designed by the sculptor Max Bachman, part of the elaborate detailing typical of the style at Milk Street in the Financial District.
the style
Built for the International Trust Company in the Beaux-Arts idiom, the building is counted among Boston's earliest examples of the style, its limestone-and-granite facade dressed with the elaborate ornament and statuary the Beaux-Arts vocabulary demanded.
More on Beaux-Artsthe architect
William Gibbons Preston was a prominent local Boston architect; the International Trust Company Building, completed in 1892-93, stands as an early local example of the Beaux-Arts style in his work.
significance
The building was designated a Boston Landmark by the Boston Landmarks Commission in 1978 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979.
nearby
- Compton Building
- McCormack Federal Bldg/Post Office/Courthse
- Old South Meeting House
- Holy Cross Church, Boston
- Old Corner Bookstore
- Codman Building