[4] Minnesota's young capital city was booming when the Germania Bank was chartered in Saint Paul in 1884, with Alexander Ramsey as its president.

From the eleven entries received, judges chose the design submitted by J. Walter Stevens, architect of several elegant Summit Avenue homes and Lowertown warehouses.

The design is a hybrid of the popular Richardsonian Romanesque style, incorporating an Italian Renaissance revival top story.

[2] The building's cavernous entries and windows are supported by Roman arches in massive walls of rusticated red Lake Superior Sandstone.

Five years later it was renamed the Pittsburgh Building, perhaps because Penn Mutual Life Insurance held the note on the mortgage.

[2] Office tenants have included doctors, dentists, lawyers, and a dressmaker as well as the Pinkerton National Detective Agency.

[2] Many of the bank's design elements were lost to remodeling over the years, including after World War II, when the storefronts were modernized to attract trend-conscious customers.