Redesigning the Past

                                         Redesigning the Past

         The Buffalo, New York News today featured a lengthy article about the substantial rehab on an old bank building, on the South side of the City. The new owners had invested over $3 million dollars to convert the solid brick-faced building into a trendy music venue and night club. They have visions of high-end clients enjoying trendy musical groups in a sophisticated setting.

          In my mind’s remembered eye, I saw what the building once had been, a solid  edifice that held the savings of the neighborhood families. It had also attracted neighborhood urchins like myself to play in and around its precincts. I had memorialized it years ago in the article below. I will always see that facility as I saw it then, no matter how modern it gets. The redesign of the past only works for those who were never there.

                             THE BANK

                   It is a single-story, solid little building that sits on the Northwest corner of Seneca Street and Seneca Parkside, on the South side of Buffalo, New York. In the early part of this century, it was occupied by the "German American Bank." The ensuing World Wars made the ethnicity of the name unpopular. It was changed, for business reasons, to the "Liberty National Bank." That is how I remember it through most of my childhood, growing up in South Buffalo. 

The Bank kept that name, until after several mergers and acquisitions in the 1980's, it became what it is today, part of the Fleet Banking system. 

The exterior of the building is unassuming. It has a brownish, corrugated stone appearance and the geometrical angular lines that distinguish and enhance many of Frank Lloyd Wright's prairie-style structures. It looks like a neighborhood library.

The building has a small ledge along its' front, about three feet high. It is just wide enough for a child to walk carefully across. To neighborhood kids like me, it was often a high walled chasm that we inched our way across, on a thousand imaginary adventures. At other times, it was an air-born troop carrier that we jumped from, clad in parachute gear. The Bank people were pretty good about not shooing us off the building, as long as we were reasonably quiet in our exploits. They only got a little nervous, when the armored cars arrived and the guards entered the building with sacks of money and hands on their guns. It was great drama for us to see these serious looking men in uniforms, with pistols at their sides. We watched them with a studious fascination that must have reinforced their own image of themselves, as fearless Mounties guarding a great treasure from all manner of dangerous desperadoes. 

It wasn't all imagination for us either. At the time, there were still several large, leaden slugs imbedded in the exterior of the building. Legend had it that machine gun toting police had shot down armed bank robbers there in the 1930's. 

We didn't need to know the details or even the truth of the matter. Running our fingers over the deeply imbedded slugs fired our imaginations. In my mind's eye, I could see grim faced Police spraying a volley of lead, at the robbers, from their stake out across Seneca street, on the corner of Buffum. The bandits returning fire, until they stumbled and fell, cut down by the withering fire of the Police. We re-enacted the scene endlessly in a thousand variations, over several summers, during the late 1950's. The Bank building seemed to get a little smaller each year, until even the "ledge" lost its' fascination for us. The bank wasn't changing, but we were.

I never really had much cause to go into the building. We knew that the Bank held money, but beyond the sum of a few dollars and change and how much candy and soda that amount would buy us at the nearby "Fishman's Five and Dime,” money didn't have much meaning for us.

It was a time when "banker's hours" meant Ten A.M. until Three P.M. and no weekends. Working people didn't have much time or reason to go there, I guess. I remember that Dad always got his loans from the Fireman's Credit Union, though I didn't know what that was or how and where they got their money from and why we needed to borrow it. Mortgages were something I had only heard mentioned in hushed terms, and the great fear was in not keeping up one's payments. Then, the bank could assume an ominous specter. Although the fear of being summoned to the bank, to explain late loan payments, was unarticulated by my parents, it was a presence and a specter always there, deep in the background shadows of everyday living. 

In the nearby St. John the Evangelist Elementary School, the Bank initiated a program that tried to teach us to become "junior savers." I remember opening an account and sending in $.25 at a time, in small sealed envelopes. I guarded tightly, the small blue pass book that listed how much money I had saved. At one time, I had amassed the princely sum of $5.75 and, it was mysteriously growing monthly with something called "interest." I didn't know what that was, but I was happy that they had my money securely locked in their big vault and were protecting it with armed guards. My fortune was secure with them. Still, I walked by the bank regularly and checked, to make sure that they were keeping the money safe for me.

In the lobby of the Bank was a small island counter that held several different colored deposit and withdrawal slips, that we viewed with great curiosity. They were stacked in neat little piles, separated by small glass partitions. A ball point pen, secured with a small cord, was available for customer's use. People filled the slips out, with great care, and then stood patiently in line, until they advanced to the marble fronted teller's cage. After a quiet conversation with the teller, they either gave or received their money and had the information written down in their Bank Book. It looked, to us, like a fairly mysterious ritual that only adults would understand. 

We played around the Bank and watched the neighborhood change over the years. The Colonial Kitchen Restaurant, Thom McCann Shoes, Sears & Roebucks, Mohegans Market and Fishman's 5 & 10 store all passed into local history. Yet, still the bank remained, doing business under several names. It had become a neighborhood fixture, something that was always "there." It is the low-slung solidity of the building that always, draws my eye. It has the look and feel of a Bank, solid, safe and secure.

I have long since moved away from the neighborhood, but when I pass there, I still find myself looking for the imbedded leaden slugs and remembering how it was, long ago and far from now.

                                               -30-

                                        (1,017 words)

                                     Joseph Xavier Martin