| Though never more than a two-bank town, there
are four buildings within the West Branch Commercial District
that were built to house bank buildings. The community's first bankin fact, it was the first bank in Cedar Countyopened in this one-story, wooden building on January 15, 1875, the same year West Branch was incorporated. West Branch lumber dealer Joseph Steer and five other local entrepreneurs pooled $50,000 to start the bank and rented the building for $45 a year. Within three years, the bank had outgrown its first home and moved across Main Street into a new two-story brick, banking house on the northwest corner of Main and Downey streets. That building remained the bank's home until 1916, when it was razed to make room for yet a larger bank on the same site. The original bank building was built so that its cornice aligned with the cornice of the adjacent Crook's Hotel, which was constructed five years earlier in 1870. After the West Branch Bank was relocated in 1877, the building was later used as a harness shop, a dressmaker's shop, a butcher shop, a barbershop and a gift shop. The building's front facade was reconstructed during a 1965 renovation of the Crook's Hotel building. The original front door was sealed and an interior doorway constructed to make the building accessible only through Crook's Hotel building. |