Dollar Savings Bank
2792 3rd Avenue | also 495 Willis Avenue | Mott Haven | built 1919
Open on the map6 entries
The city photographed every building for its tax records around 1940 and again in the 1980s. NYC Municipal Archives.
Written with AI from the source each entry cites, then fact-checked.
- 1915
George E. Edwards leads Dollar Savings to the decision to build a new headquarters
George E. Edwards, born in New York City in 1869, joined the Twenty-Third Ward Bank in 1888 and was elected a trustee of the Dollar Savings Bank in February 1899. Under his direction the bank expanded in step with the Bronx's booming population, and by 1915 it had become necessary to put up a new headquarters building.
- 1919
Renwick, Aspinwall & Tucker design a limestone bank on a three-street corner
The Classical Revival bank at 2792 Third Avenue is faced all over in limestone and occupies a trapezoidal corner lot with fronts on three streets, each with its own window pattern. Its canted corner entrance has a bracketed pediment, a round-arched window, paired Ionic pilasters and laurel leaves, and a frieze carved DOLLAR SAVINGS BANK crowns the building.
“The impressive building is clad entirely in limestone, and sits on a trapezoidal corner lot with facades facing three streets…”
- 1926
The bank enlarges its headquarters as it becomes the biggest in the Bronx
Dollar Savings enlarged the building in 1926 and installed safe deposit boxes in the basement for its customers. Depositors had reached 53,000 by 1919; by 1926 there were 80,000, with assets above $67 million and a surplus of more than $7 million, making Dollar the largest bank in the Bronx at the time.
“In 1926 the bank was enlarged and safe deposit boxes were installed in the basement for the benefit of depositors.”
- 1950
Dollar Savings moves its main offices to its Grand Concourse branch
By the late 1940s Dollar had grown into the sixth-largest savings bank in the United States. Around 1950 it moved its headquarters out of the Third Avenue building, which had served as its main office since 1919, to its Fordham branch at 2516-2530 Grand Concourse, itself now a designated city landmark.
- 1974
Dollar Savings sells its old headquarters to the Seventh-day Adventists
After Dollar bought the Fordham Savings Bank in 1932 and repeatedly expanded its Grand Concourse branch, the Third Avenue building stopped being the bank's main office. In 1974 the bank sold the building to the Northeastern Conference Corporation of Seventh Day Adventists.
“In 1974 the bank was sold to the Northeastern Conference Corporation of Seventh Day Adventists.”
- 2010
The former Dollar Savings Bank is designated a New York City landmark
Following a public hearing on December 15, 2009, where three witnesses spoke in favor, among them speakers for the Historic Districts Council and the New York Landmarks Conservancy, the commission designated the building on January 12, 2010. It cited the building as a reminder of the Classical Revival banks built in the city in that era.
Further reading
- Dollar Savings BankWikipedia
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