State Savings Bank

In a district that measures status in stories, the State Savings Bank pulled the ultimate power move: three floors of solid white marble, designed in 1900 by McKim, Mead & White — Stanford White himself — and it remains the only major building in Michigan by America’s most celebrated Beaux-Arts firm. Ionic columns frame the Fort Street entrance, figures of Industry and Commerce preside above it, and inside, a two-story banking hall wrapped in arched colonnades hides a Thomas Dewing mural over the Congress Street door. A 1914 addition doubled it so seamlessly you’d never spot the seam.

The modern chapter is a rescue story: in 2012 the Penobscot‘s then-owner wanted to raze this jewel for a parking lot, was mercifully denied, and the building was bought and saved in 2014. Today it lives on as a private event venue — which means the marble hall mostly opens for weddings and galas, and the rest of us admire the exterior from the sidewalk. On our list as the little marble masterpiece the skyscrapers couldn’t intimidate.