DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll give it to you straight with a little color on the side. Back in 1926, a man named Charles A. Fisk — president of the Amarillo Bank and Trust — looked out at the West Texas sky and apparently decided it needed some company.
He and a group of investors commissioned a skyscraper, right there in Amarillo. They brought in a local architect, Guy A. Carlander, to draw the thing up, and handed the building work to the Gilsonite Contracting Co. out of Dallas.
Now, nobody builds a skyscraper in a hurry, and this one was no exception. It took until December of 1928 before the building formally opened its doors. And when it did, the Amarillo Daily News couldn't help but note that the final cost had crept — or maybe lunged — to what the paper called 'dangerously close' to one million dollars.
Dangerously close. In 1928. You can almost hear the collective gulp.
Fisk's own bank took the ground floor, because when you're the one who signed the checks, you get the street-level real estate. Professional and retail tenants filled the floors above. Eleven stories of steel-reinforced concrete, clad in red brick and dressed up with terra cotta trim, the whole thing done in gothic revival style.
In the middle of the Texas Panhandle. Reaching up toward that enormous sky. That building didn't just open — it arrived.
What the marker says
In 1926, Charles A. Fisk, president of the Amarillo Bank and Trust, and other investors commissioned this skyscraper designed by Amarillo architect Guy A. Carlander and built by the Gilsonite Contracting Co. of Dallas. The building formally opened in Dec. 1928, when an Amarillo Daily News article reported its cost as “dangerously close” to one million dollars. Fisk’s bank occupied the ground floor, with a mix of professional and retail tenants above. The eleven-story steel-reinforced concrete frame building is clad in red brick with terra cotta trim and exhibits gothic revival style detailing.