The original plan was pretty sweet, but the building ended being a bit more conservative than originally envisioned. Wonder why? Did the client get cold feet, or did the architects revise their ideas for a more conservative town, or was the commission stolen by an unscrupulous architect who stole the design and diluted it? As Purcell - one of the original architects - noted later:

"We lost this commission under circumstances which made us a bit peevish because we felt that the bank's executive dealt unfairly with us. It was the privilege of this cashier not fully to approve of the studies we made for him, but we were entitled to the opportunity for revising them until he was satisfied, more especially because we had completely sold him on the idea of organic, American architecture for his building. He took our ideas to a commercial architect of no particular standing [Ellerbe] in either business or in the profession who made a transcription of our project and carried out a building which so nearly resembled what we were doing in the Middle West at that time, that to this day people think that it is one of our buildings. "