First National Bank Building, 125-129 West Crawford Avenue, Connellsville, Fayette County, PA

Significance: The First National Bank Building (FNBB) is significant as a local example of a multiple-use, multiple-story, commercial building in the Beaux Arts/Eclectic style. The building was designed by the New York City based architectural firm of Mowbray and Uffinger, the designers of similar bank buildings through the northeast. The high style architecture of this commercial building is representative of the extreme wealth Connellsville achieved during the coal and coke era.
The building also has important ties to commerce as the historic headquarters of the First National Bank of Connellsville and as home of the Wright-Metzler Department Store. Wright-Metzler was eventually absorbed by the equally successful Troutman Department in 1925. The period of significance for this building begins with its construction between the years of 1901 and 1903, and ends in the 1940s with the beginning of a slow decline resulting in the closing and subsequent abandonment of the building in the early 1980s.
Survey number: HABS PA-6208