Empire Trust Company Building

Every American main street of the 1910s had one of these on its best corner: a trust company built to look like money was safe inside it. Classical revival detailing does the persuading, with engaged columns rising through the facade, a heavy cornice line, deep window reveals and the company name cut into stone above the entrance. On a layout it works as an anchor. Banks and trust companies took the intersections, so this one gives a model railway town or diorama its centre of gravity, the block that everything else arranges itself around. It reads as period-correct against brick storefronts, streetcar track and early motor traffic. Supplied as a single file, for anyone assembling a street scene, staging a Depression-era set piece, or simply after a building with more presence than another row of shopfronts.