Letter: Coming soon, Bristol will be robbed of a bank

Posted 6/28/19

On July 16, 2019, the Bristol branch of Bank of America will close, leaving that bank’s   branches nearest to Bristolians in Barrington and Fall River. This is a bank robbery in reverse.

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Letter: Coming soon, Bristol will be robbed of a bank

Posted

On July 16, 2019, the Bristol branch of Bank of America will close, leaving that bank’s  branches nearest to Bristolians in Barrington and Fall River. This is a bank robbery in reverse.

It is often said that corporations, as mere legal persons, have no compassion or socio-cultural sensibility. In this case, Bank of America also lacks good sense. To deprive Bristol, a university town with a population of nearly 23,000, of the services of a major national bank must have been a decision made by financial nerds in a cubicle, divorced both from reality and Rhode Island, and without input from the dedicated staff at the Bristol branch.

Separate and apart from this bewildering financial decision is its complete disregard for history.  Bank of America, a California creation, absorbed Fleet-Boston Financial in 1998, the Fleet portion of which had evolved in 1982 from the Industrial Trust Bank. That institution had been founded in 1886 by Bristol industrialist and town benefactor, Samuel Pomeroy Colt. This rubber baron’s creation, the Industrial Trust Company, merged at the outset with the Providence Bank, founded in 1791, one of the oldest financial institutions in the nation.

This fiscal genealogy shows that Bank of America has important Rhode Island roots and Bristol antecedents that it has disowned. For example, in 2008 it sold the 1927 Industrial Trust Building, Providence’s tallest skyscraper, to High Rock Development. After its sale, the bank acquired a tenancy there which it terminated in 2012, thereby leaving this iconic “Superman” Building vacant. High Rock then sued the bank for neglecting the building and leaving it in a deteriorating condition.

Colt’s Industrial Trust Bank came to Bristol in 1900 when it acquired four small Bristol banks. Until the mid-1950s it was housed on the first floor of the building now occupied by Rogers Free Library. Then it built its present office, beautifully designed by local architect Wallis E. Howe, at 601 Hope St., in the town center on the parade route.

In July, when Bank of America makes its final withdrawal, it will have choices. It can simply abandon 601 Hope St., as it did the Superman Building and its financial center on Main Street in Warren, or, like Colt, it can donate the structure to the town. It could be used as a Bristol historical museum, or for some other historically appropriate purpose commensurate with Bristol’s valid claim as Rhode Island’s most patriotic town.

The latter course of action would be a wonderful windfall for Bristol, but I wouldn’t bank on it.

(Dr.)  Patrick T.  Conley
Bristol

Mr. Conley is Historian Laureate of Rhode Island.

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