The strong, continuous piers terminating in pinnacles and the dominant three-story arches on the lower levels, with narrower arched forms repeated in the upper portions, give this building a vigorous vertical thrust. In fact, it seems almost a provocative transformation of H. H. Richardson's Marshall Field Store in Chicago into a vertical building. The exterior is sheathed in terra-cotta with reliefs by Corrado Joseph Parducci. Depicting the early history of the city, they include Indian tomahawks, canoes, pine trees, wolverines, and other native animals. The colonnaded second-floor banking room and safe deposit vaults are enriched with marble, terrazzo, and metalwork.