This one is interesting, and many thanks to Donna Reiner for pointing it out. It stands on 24th Street, originally a First National Bank branch bank, and now owned by the city, occupied by the airport's noise-abatement program.

The year is 1967, a couple of years after the Mushroom Bank. This one has an entry formed by the canopy of seven stems with hexagonal tops, three inside and four outside, forming a 'grove' standing a couple of feet above the rest of the roof. The hexagonal module is echoed in the brick planters and all through the floorplan, a challenge for the architect to avoid odd corners.

Interesting, too, because it stands between Washington and Jefferson, between the west-bound and east-bound LightRail tracks. This will be a highly visible building come October 2008. "What's that? Is that the Mushroom Bank they keep talking about?"

Few will see the inside, all hexagons and clerestory lights in the foyer, which is attractive.

The credited architect is (George) Walsh & (Kenneth) Oberg. Their designer was Joe Gilleland, as of 2007 in his final year of practice out in Glendale.

This FNB branch had a larger budget than usual ($250K) because it was planned as the Sky Harbor branch, to create first impressions for people on their way into the city. The object was to make a highly visible showpiece from 24th Street. Unfortunately this was the western exposure, so a glass lobby would only be workable with deep shade, hence the seven concrete 'parasols'. Each has a central drain, "like a birdbath". Then "the landscaper felt obliged to come in with orange trees" also for the sake of creating first impressions among visitors.

Gilleland spent some time with the all-hexagonal floorplan at the time, to avoid leftover acute angles resulting in unusable space. This was his first bank; he did another FNB in Yuma. Gilleland was a graduate of Texas Tech, knew the church architect William Knight Jr. (also a Texas Tech graduate), and came to the valley temporarily, he said, 47 years ago.

According to Joe, he and Frank Henry did not know they had arrived at roughly parallel design solutions until they sought each others' plans. Frank remembers this differently.