Thursday, June 21, 2012

Cleaning out Grandma's House

While cleaning out the house my grandfather built in 1972, we have encountered many strange & wonderful (& disgusting) things. My grandmother loved to collect things. There is the silver spoon collection of places she visited, & a few people brought back for her. There is the Saratoga Racetrack collectibles from the many years my grandfather worked there painting fences, the boat in the pond, & anything else that stood still long enough. But what I like most are all of the local history items & memorabilia from the USA Bicentennial in 1976.

Greenwich (NYC) Savings Bank promotional tape measure

The Greenwich Savings Bank was established in 1833. Other than that I had very little to go on until my mother began to remember....

In 1964, my grandfather, Charles "Pepper" Martin, took his daughter Tamaris to the Greenwich Savings Bank of New York to take out a loan for college. She had decided to attend the State College at Buffalo to become a Home Economics teacher. She says the bank was at 170 Main Street where the the Orthodontics office of Dr. Byrne now resides. She remembers this very distinctly, & 48 years later is baffled as to why he took her to that bank. My grandfather always did business with a bank in Schuylerville, so why did he take her to Greenwich?

Unfortunately, my mother is incorrect on the name of the bank. The Greenwich Savings Bank of New York started out in Greenwich Village in Manhattan in 1833, survived the Panic of 1893, & built a magnificent structure in 1924.* It closed it's doors in 1981 as the 16th largest bank in the US.^ It is quite possible the cinder block building at 170 Main did house a bank. Anyone know what it was called?


^ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenwich_Savings_Bank
* http://daytoninmanhattan.blogspot.com/2010/10/1924-greenwich-savings-bank-1352.html