Broad Street Head Office -
The ceremony to lay the Foundation Stone for the Bank's new Head Offices in Broad Street took place on Saturday, October 22nd 1932.
The following photographs recorded the event, and show a group of distinguished visitors and journalists gathered to witness the ceremony.
The
Foundation Stone was laid close to the building's loggia, and the assembled crowd are in the Broad Street frontage area of the building
site. Already visible are sections of the building's steel frame and the lower part of one of the loggia's pillars.
The branch was
to close for business almost exactly 66 years later:
Two images showing Neville Chamberlain being presented with a ceremonial trowel with which to perform the laying ceremony. For
many years, this trowel was displayed in a cabinet in the building's Banking Hall, but is now in the custody of the Savings Banks
Museum at Ruthwell, Scotland.
The trowel's inscription reads:
Presentation by the architect of
T Cecil Howitt, FRIBA to
The Right Honourable
Neville Chamberlain, MP
Chancellor of the Exchequer
on the occasion of laying
the foundation stone of the new
Head Offices of the
Birmingham
Municipal Bank
Neville Chamberlain laying the Foundation Stone
Neville Chamberlain (centre in top hat) is congratulated by the Bank's General Manager, J P Hilton
Inscription of the foundation stone:
The Lord Mayor again addresses the assembly