City Trust, Safe Deposit and Security Company

927-929 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia PA

1887-88, 1895-97; demolished

History of the Building:

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 delicate 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.

Wilson Eyre had his own offices on top floor of the City Trust Building.

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