描述
**Trustees System Service Building**
**Art by:** Chris Hytha
**Story by:** Mark Houser
Raised "El" tracks wrap around this highrise, which makes viewing the facade tricky. It's a pity, because the entrance is splendid, surrounded with limestone relief panels of the history of commerce by Chicago artist Gwen Lux and an exquisite cut lead grille overhead with silhouettes of farmers, riveters, lumberjacks, and other laborers.
Inside, two more Lux panels flanking a red marble main staircase reveal the rationale of the consumer mortgage bank that built this tower. One shows a workingman cradling a miniature house, with the legend "Life prospers the thrifty." On the other side, a balding, shoeless figure glares ruefully above the legend "Life punishes the thriftless."
Life prospered and punished John Corcoran, who founded Trustees System Service in Birmingham, Alabama, to offer mortgages to working people. He grew it to 24 branches, relocated to Chicago, and commissioned this tower, but the bank failed in the Depression a few years later. Corcoran and five other company officials, including his brother, were accused of deceiving investors. The case was thrown out on a technicality, and prosecutors dropped the issue since the Corcorans had lost their own money in the crash too. The longtime office building is now fully residential.
