Alan Morrell

Rochester Savings Bank started with a $13 deposit a few years before Rochester was even a city.

The bank grew to a billion-dollar institution known for its civic involvement before it was swallowed up by larger financial firms after bank deregulation in the 1980s. Rochester Savings Bank made a huge impact locally during its 150-plus-year tenure, introducing a number of banking "firsts," employing a soon-to-be Rochester legend and constructing a still-standing building often called the most magnificent in all of Monroe County.

Civic leaders created Rochester Savings Bank in 1831, when the area was still the village of Rochesterville. RSB was the sixth savings bank in New York state and the first in the country west of Albany. Rochesterville, which became Rochester in 1834, already had two commercial banks but neither was designed for the small investor.

"They were adequate for merchants and businessmen, but there was nothing for the safeguarding of the workingman's funds and the crediting of interest," wrote Lloyd E. Klos in the book A Resident's Recollections (Book 6).

A local grocer named Harmon Taylor got things going with that $13 initial deposit. In those early years, RSB customers made deposits at a window in the Bank of Rochester on Exchange Street and at the Bank of Monroe, the commercial banks. As business picked up, RSB opened its first building at 47 State St. in 1842.

A new, bigger building followed at West Main and Fitzhugh streets in 1857. Enlarged and renovated several times, that structure lasted almost a century before it was razed in 1955 and replaced by a more modern facility on the same site the following year.

The Rochester Chamber of Commerce got started in the original West Main building, and the well-known sculpture of Mercury that adorns the top of Lawyers Cooperative Building downtown was designed there.

George Eastman started work at RSB in the 1870s as a bookkeeper. While working there, he got more interested and involved in the process of photography and left to form Eastman Kodak Co.

Eastman was one of many notable business icons who served on the Rochester Savings Bank board of directors over the years. Others included Joseph C. Wilson of Xerox fame, Kodak CEOs like Colby Chandler, and Marion Folsom, who went on to serve as Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare in the Eisenhower administration.

RSB pioneered a payroll-savings plan for workers early in the 20th century and started a popular "school savings plan" for kids in 1915. The initiative, which lasted for decades, encouraged youngsters to save money and opened accounts that were started with as little as a nickel deposit.

Business continued to flourish, and RSB opened a branch office at 40 Franklin St. in 1928. The spectacular structure, in the Byzantine architectural style, was the first commercial building in Rochester to be designated a historic landmark.

"Few cathedrals of the New World evidence the grandeur of this 1928 'temple of commerce,' " wrote Paul Malo in the book Landmarks of Rochester and Monroe County.

Features included glass mosaics on the walls, a marble mosaic floor, marble columns and a wood-coffered ceiling painted by American muralist Ezra Winter. The Landmark Society of Western New York praised the place as "the most dazzling interior in Monroe County." The building is now occupied by Citizens Bank.

RSB's West Main Street-Fitzhugh building, which debuted in 1956, was the first bank in Rochester to offer drive-in teller service. Around that time, RSB moved its main offices to Franklin Street and soon started opening branch offices, the first at North Clinton and East Ridge Road. "Computer branches," the forerunners to ATMs, were introduced in 1976.

The end was near for the venerable Rochester Savings Bank, though. When the federal government changed banking regulations in the 1970s and 1980s, savings banks, including RSB, grappled to survive. James C. Duffus, a longtime RSB trustee, described the seismic shift in his book, The Old Bank/The Rochester Savings Bank and its Presidents and Trustees from 1831 to 1983.

"Most of the savings banks … that did not fail were either acquired or had to merge. … Mammoth financial institutions had formed across the country, and their ability to compete was overwhelming. The extraordinary era of the savings bank was coming to a close."

Citing a first-half loss of $34 million in 1982, Rochester Savings Bank merged with Community Savings Bank the following year. The newly named Rochester Community Savings Bank converted to a publicly traded stock institution in 1986 and merged with Charter One Financial Corp. in 1997. Other changes have occurred since then.

Rochester Savings Bank is but a memory nowadays, but its impact in Rochester was vast during its run.

Morrell is a Rochester-based freelance writer.

*****

About this feature

"Whatever Happened To? ..." is a feature that explores favorite haunts of the past and revisits the headlines of yesteryear. It's a partnership between RocRoots.com and "Hometown Rochester" on Facebook.

Have an idea you'd like us to explore? Email us at roc-roots@DemocratandChronicle.com.