Citizens Savings Bank
58 Bowery | also 150 Canal Street, 54 Bowery | Chinatown | built 1924
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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.
- 1860
New York State charters Citizens Savings Bank for small depositors
New York State chartered Citizens Savings Bank on April 5, 1860, to take deposits from tradesmen, clerks, mechanics, laborers, servants and minors. Seymour A. Bunce, a bookseller and former councilman, was central to winning the charter and served as the first secretary. The first president was George Folsom, a retired lawyer who had also been a state senator, a diplomat in Holland and a historian.
- 1890
A run on Citizens Savings Bank starts when a teller is misunderstood
In November 1890 Citizens Savings Bank faced a run on its deposits. The Landmarks Commission, citing New York Times coverage, says a depositor misread a teller's words when he tried to take money out after the bank had shut for the day. The rumor then moved through the immigrant press, and the Times reported on the run from November 21 to 23, when it was fading.
- 1922
The bank rebuilds on its own site without closing its doors
By the start of 1920 Citizens Savings Bank held about $21.8 million in deposits, and its trustees concluded the old building could no longer handle the business. A building committee chaired by vice president James Rowland hired the architect Clarence W. Brazer. The bank kept serving customers at 58 Bowery throughout, as the new structure rose under, around and over the old one.
- 1924
Charles Keck's thrift sculptures crown the bank's Bowery cornice
Brazer's granite bank, about 110 feet tall, stands directly across from the Manhattan Bridge arch and is topped by an octagonal clerestory and dome. The sculptor Charles Keck designed the cornice figures from the bank's seal, which Seymour Bunce had created: a clock crowned by an eagle between a seated Native American and a sailor, with beehives, the old symbol of thrift, at the corners. The group made the building a landmark to riders of the Third Avenue El and travelers on the bridge.
- 2011
The Landmarks Commission designates the Citizens Savings Bank
The Landmarks Preservation Commission held a hearing on March 22, 2011, where four speakers backed designation, among them the Historic Districts Council, the Bowery Alliance of Neighbors and the New York Landmarks Conservancy. On August 9, 2011, the commission designated the 1922-24 building an individual landmark. By then it was a branch of HSBC.
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