Felanitx Bank

This is the old bank of Felanitx, located on Carrer de sa Plaça. It was founded in 1883 as a public limited company with a capital of 636,500 pesetas represented by 1,273 shares of 500 pesetas. For the first fourteen years, its registered office was in Can Manual d’es Sitjar, the premises of the Ateneu d’agricultura, industria i comerçe, where the foundation of the Bank was conceived. The first president was Miquel Reus Bennàsser, between 1883 and 1917. In 1897, the Bank moved to its own house on Carrer de sa Plaça.

It is an urban palace in an eclectic style that was built in 1919 by Antoni Vaquer Noguera. The building is characterized by having a floor plan adapted to the needs and a facade where aesthetic values ​​predominate over constructive ones, thus following the models of urban palaces of the 16th and 17th centuries, which used Gothic schemes.

The facade, articulated with rigorous symmetry, stands out for its flatness, the order of the spaces and the decorative simplicity. Although the upper porch typical of the architecture of stately homes disappears, a new floor appears with an identical composition to the lower floors. The usual structure of a ground floor and two floors is maintained.

The symmetry that the facade follows is broken and, at the same time, accentuated by the treatment that is given to the central body, which protrudes in relation to the line of the facade with greater ornamentation. The balcony of the first floor that sits on decorated corbels and supported on the pilasters of the door stands out from this central body. Regarding the balcony, the trefoiled arch that articulates the opening stands out. The type of plant decoration with palmette that can be seen, as well as its repetition as a decorative element throughout the facade, clearly reminds us of the neo-Greek historicist trend. Antoni Vaquer had worked as a sculptor under the orders of the architect M. Rigo in works such as the Banc Balear de Palma (1870), in a neo-Greek style and with the presence of the same type of plant decoration based on palmettes. If we look at the arrangement of curvilinear elements that exist on the facade of the Banc de Felanitx and the floral decoration of the forged, we must think of another type of influence that is closer to modernism. Therefore, it can be said that this building would be integrated into the current of eclecticism.