A ferocious fire in 1982 destroyed a Minneapolis bank but left a Charles Lindbergh plane unscathed

This lady is making the first deposit in the new Northwestern National Bank Building in downtown Minneapolis, at 6th Street and Marquette Avenue. A solemn occasion, a sacred trust: We'll hold on to that, ma'am, and it'll be here if you need it. Why, just look around at this magnificent space, with its thick forest of columns, its acres of fine marble, and more than a hundred teller cages to serve you. We're as solid as Gibraltar!

The bank, built in 1930, is no longer around. (Northwestern became Norwest in the '80s and merged with Wells Fargo in the '90s.) The building was lost in a spectacularly ruinous fire on Thanksgiving Day 1982. Some idiots started a fire in the adjacent Donaldson's store, which was empty and awaiting the wrecking ball, and it spread to the old building. No one died in the blaze, but the Weatherball, which had shone its color-coded weather forecasts from atop the building since 1949, was a victim. It was removed from the top of building before demolition began, then was dismantled and stored at the State Fairgrounds until it was later scrapped.

It was a disaster, but it could've been worse. As John Morrison, chairman of the bank, said in a letter to the public after the fire: "The best photo of all was never taken. It was too smoky and too dangerous to shoot. Inside the bank, suspended in splendid importability, was the WW1 plane once owned by Charles Lindbergh. It survived the terrible fire intact."

It had been installed the Monday before the fire.

By the way, if you're wondering if the depositing lady needed her husband's permission: no. Northwestern had been helping women open their own accounts since 1901.