First NBC Bank

The building at 210 Baronne St. was originally constructed as a bank before it became a special events venue.

 Photo by Michael DeMocker / The Times-Picayune

Hey Blake,

I’m invited to a wedding reception at the Capital on Baronne, located inside the old First NBC Bank building. Was it originally built as a bank?

Dear reader,

The building at 210 Baronne Street began life as the headquarters of Canal Bank and Trust. It opened in 1927.

Canal Bank and Trust had its roots in the New Orleans Canal and Banking Company, founded in 1831. Its original purpose was to finance the construction of the New Basin Canal, hence its name. According to The Times-Picayune, the bank, which later became Canal Bank and Trust, grew into the largest bank in the South at the time of the Great Depression. It was liquidated in 1933 and reopened as the National Bank of Commerce.

Its Baronne Street headquarters were designed by noted architect Emile Weil, whose other local projects included the Saenger Theatre, Touro Synagogue and Whitney Bank building. The Canal Bank and Trust building was constructed at a cost of $5 million, according to a November 1927 Times-Picayune article.

Over the years, the Baronne Street building was hailed by architectural historians and critics. In a 1991 Times-Picayune column, art critic Roger Green said the bank building offered depositors “quite a lot — architecturally speaking — for their money,” explaining that it imitated a “Renaissance palazzo in Florence” with its limestone exterior and ornate features.

In 1971, the bank was renamed First National Bank of Commerce. When a later incarnation of that bank (also headquartered there) failed in 2017, the Baronne Street building was sold. It was converted into apartments and commercial offices. The original lobby was restored and reopened as the Capital on Baronne.