dnb first bank

exton, chester county, pennsylvania

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individual retail facility

 

Facility Branch banks have evolved over time to become true retail rather, than institutional, facilities by virtue of their location within shopping centers, as well as individual stores, and the incorporation of drive thru functions.  As such, this branch of DNB First Bank occupies a “pad site” at a regional shopping mall and involved the historic restoration and rehabilitation of a former stone dairy barn turned ice cream parlor and restaurant.  Cee Jay Frederick Associates had full responsibility for the land and site planning and landscape design, architectural design and documentation and construction administration in bringing this individual community facility to fruition.

 

historic preservation design and planning 

 

The DNB First Bank occupies a “pad site” at a regional shopping mall as a consequence of the desire to save the historic “Guernsey Cow”, a working early 20th Century Dairy Barn turned ice cream parlor and restaurant in its later years. Irreparable additions were demolished and significant and transformative additions were added to the extant structure to outfit it as a typical retail branch bank.  Atypically, however, it involved the historic restoration and rehabilitation of the former stone dairy barn.  This was more or less mandated by the Township’s Historic District Preservation Ordinance, but was also somewhat of a natural conclusion, given that three other historic buildings had been, or were in the process of being, restored and adaptively re-used as outliers to the Mall proper, as part of its overall rehabilitiation.  The agrarian theme to the Mall renovations and site design and the close proximity of the stone farmhouse, to which it was probably first accessory, and a second farmhouse, that was moved equally close to it, allowed for a greater historic presence and coordinated architectural expression.