The Stained Glass Skylight
Early twentieth century
Walk to the middle of the ground floor and look straight up. Four storeys above you, the atrium ends in a great octagonal skylight of stained glass, gold and amber at the edges, clear in the centre, held in a web of black iron. On a bright day it throws coloured light down the whole shaft of the building, and the balustrades and marble below take on a warm, honeyed tone. It is the single image most visitors take away from the CCBB, and it was the reason the bank's customers, a century ago, felt they were somewhere important.
The glass is arranged in radiating panels around the central clear section, with stylised leaves and flowers in the borders in the manner of the Art Nouveau that was fashionable when the building went up. Look closely at the iron frame: the curling brackets that support it are decorative as well as structural, and they match the balustrades on each floor. Skylights like this were the natural way to light a deep bank building before electric light was reliable, and the clear centre let the maximum daylight reach the counters on the ground floor.
The skylight was restored when the building became a cultural centre, with broken panes replaced and the ironwork cleaned and repainted. The best view is from the top floor gallery, where you are close enough to see the individual pieces of glass and the lead lines between them, and where you can look down through the atrium to the mosaic floor far below. Photographers gather here; the symmetry of the octagon inside the rectangle of the balconies is hard to resist. Come back at the end of your visit, when the light has moved, and it will look different again.
Did You Know? The clear glass at the centre of the skylight is not a later repair but the original design, meant to send the strongest daylight down to the tellers' counters.
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