Cedar County didn't have a bank until January of 1875, when West Branch lumber dealer Joseph Steer and five other local businessmen came up with $50,000 to open the West Branch Bank. To meet the new bank's needs, a one-story frame addition was built onto the west side of Crook's Hotel. Steer and the other bank directors agreed to rent the tiny new bank building for five years at $45 a year. But, within three years, the prosperity that swept West Branch into a new century saw the young bank outgrow its first home.

In September of 1877, the bank moved across Main Street into a new two-story brick, banking house on the northwest corner of Main and Downey streets. The brick bank building was built in 1916 as a replacement for the smaller 1877 brick bank building erected on the same site. The generations of prosperity that began over 100 years ago brought West Branch area farmers to town with money to spend and money to bank. By 1916, when the existing bank building was constructed, the assets of what had become the West Branch State Bank had grown from the original $50,000 to $402,897. Though the bank's name would change three times­to the West Branch State Bank in 1895, the First State Bank in 1934 and back to the West Branch State Bank in 1969­the bank remained at Main and Downey streets until December of 1974, when it moved to its present location one block west.

"Service built up our name, our reputation and our splendid list of patrons," said an ad in the January 11, 1917, edition of The West Branch Times. "It made our old quarters cramped and inadequate." While the new building was under construction, the bank moved its offices across Main Street into the west room of the Union Block. The building to the west was built in 1898 as the first permanent home of the town's other bank, the Citizens' Savings Bank. In 1916, it housed Blazek's Grocery, but the old vault, which the grocer used to store eggs, remained, as it does today. A door was cut into the vault from the Union Block building, allowing the displaced West Branch State Bank to use its rival's old vault for fireproof storage of safety deposit boxes.

Restroom Steals the Show
To allow for construction of a larger bank building, the east wing of a large, two-story frame building on Main Street, just west of the construction site, was torn down. That building had housed a cafe, a billiard parlor, a shooting gallery and, years earlier at a different location, a Quaker school for Osage Indian children who were sent to West Branch for an education from the Indian Territory that later became Oklahoma. During excavation for the new bank building's foundation, the east side of the pool hall's foundation collapsed, nearly burying workmen under stone and brick. There were two slight injuries. By mid-September of 1916, the building's walls of Bedford stone and brick were in place, and the carpenters and tinners were busy installing the roof. When the bank was finally completed in December, the focus of attention wasn't its new Victor manganese steel safe with its triple time lock, but the bank's new ladies rest room.

"One of the finest parts of the whole building is the ladies rest room," The West Branch Times reported on December 21, 1916. "All neatly and modernly equipped and furnished for the benefit of the ladies." Even an ad announcing a two-day open house at the new bank mentioned the rest room as a feature not to be missed: "~dies! We will have a lady attendant in charge on the two dates named above to welcome you to the new Rest Room. The room was built for your convenience."
Fred Albin, whose meat market for years had fronted Downey Street at the rear of the 1877 bank building, relocated his shop into the back of the new bank building. Also returning to the new building was the West Branch Telephone Company, which hosted an oyster stew dinner in its new, second-floor bank building office suite on April 24, 1917, to celebrate the installation of a new, 500-drop switchboard. A three-room, second-floor apartment was rented in January of 1917 to W.H. Young and his wife. Another upstairs tenant - Hubbard & Hubbard Chiropracters, practicioners of the Palmer System - moved into their office suite in February.

This massive banking house was the last downtown commercial construction project before the post-World War I collapse of the farm economy that ended the prosperity that had been enjoyed for years by West Branch area farmers and the downtown businessmen who relied upon their trade. "I remember that on November 11, 1918, when the war ended, people had corn they wouldn't sell until the price hit $2 a bushel," recalls L.C. Rummells, who began working in the new bank building in 1919 as a janitor and bookkeeper for $1.50 a day. "The prices kept going down until corn was sold for 25 cents a bushel in 1921," said Rummells, who eventually became the bank's president. "I remember settling an estate in 1921 and having to sell corn for 15 cents a bushel just to pay the taxes."

The post-war collapse of the farm economy was followed by the Great Depression and the bank closings that were ordered on the heels of the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt. On August 23, 1934, it was announced in The West Branch Times that the West Branch State Bank had been reorganized and would absorb what remained of the holdings of the Citizens' Savings Bank. It would reopen the next day as the First State Bank. Like the rest of the nation, it would survive the Depression and thrive again. On the bank's 75th anniversary in 1945, it boasted in a newspaper ad of having seen West Branch through three wars and 10 major depressions. By then, deposits had reached $1.2 million.