The Bank for Savings, 278-280 Park Ave. South at 22nd St. (2002)

This was the central bank for The Bank For Savings, New York's oldest savings bank (chartered in New York State 3/26/1819). The bank was located here from 1894 until 1982 when they merged with the State Buffalo Savings Bank and the name was changed to Goldome Bank for Savings.

The address was 280 Fourth Ave. until the early 1960s when this area of Fourth Avenue was renamed Park Avenue South. Prior to 1894 the bank was located on Chambers St. (until 1857), then at 67 Bleecker St. A history of the bank was written by Charles E. Knowles (published in 1929 under the title History of the Bank for Savings in the City of New York, 1819-1929). President at the time of construction of 280 4th Ave. was Merritt Trimble (1824-1903). His son, Walter Trimble (1857-1926), was president of the bank from 1907 to 1926. The building was designed by Cyrus L. W. Eidlitz (1853-1921), better known for his Times Tower (1903-05) in Times Square.

The early years of the Bank for Savings were described as follows by Stephen Jenkins in his The Greatest Street in the World: The Story of Broadway, Old and New, from the Bowling Green to Albany (1911): "On March 26, 1818, the first savings bank ever operated in the city was opened in a basement room [of a building on Chambers Street built in 1796 as an almshouse]; it was called at first the Chambers Street Bank, and later the Bleecker Street Savings Bank; it is now at Fourth Avenue and Twenty-second Street."

In the late 1980s this elegant banking space was converted to the demeaning status of a grocery store (Morton Williams Associated)... But the night depository box is still there (as of Feb. 2003). For image click here.

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