The Sullivan Building, a Striking 'Jewel Box Bank' in Ohio, is Rehabilitated for Modern Use
As of October 2025, Central Ohio’s many architectural treasures include the rehabilitated Sullivan Building in Newark. Completed in 1915, the two-story, 2,595-square-foot structure was one of eight Midwestern “jewel box banks” designed by renowned Chicago architect Louis Sullivan toward the end of his career. These distinctive buildings were modern, box-like, and ornate, with richly detailed terra cotta and decorative glass, says Peter Krajnak, principal at Rogers Krajnak Architects (RKA), which led the decade-plus, $14 million rehabilitation along with the owner, the nonprofit Licking County Foundation (LCF).
photo by: Brad Feinknopf/OTTO
A bank designed by Louis Sullivan in Newark, Ohio, has been adapted into a welcome center for the local tourism bureau.
Unlike some of its peers, the Newark bank had seen many uses—butcher shop, jewelry store, ice-cream parlor—over time, which informed RKA’s approach, says Senior Project Manager Daniel DeGreve. Principal Darryl Rogers agrees: “We weren’t going to try to fix and make everything look perfect. We all chose to tell the story of what the building went through.”
The project team returned the exterior to its 1915 appearance and integrated history and educational moments inside. Art conservators from Conrad Schmitt Studios cleaned and stabilized hand-stenciled murals of red, green, blue, and gold geometric and nature-based motifs by Sullivan and his frequent collaborator Louis Millet, but they also filled small areas of missing paint with a neutral hue to acknowledge their past neglect.
Rather than rebuild the original teller stations, the team infilled their footprints with quartz flooring to enable the bank hall to host events as the new welcome center for local tourism bureau Explore Licking County.
Central to the project’s feasibility was the annexation of a neighboring building to hold infrastructure for modern-day code and accessibility requirements. RKA also fast-tracked work on the bank’s basement, which extends under the sidewalk, to correspond with the city’s streetscape improvement effort in 2016.
LCF Strategic Initiatives Director Connie Hawk has stewarded the rehabilitation—and given hundreds of tours—since 2014, yet she still delights in the project. It expresses Sullivan’s “quintessentially American style of architecture,” she says. “He took a small [building] and made it monumental.”
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