Banking on Downtown: The National Bank of Brunswick

This article originally appeared in the January 2025 edition of Discover Downtown, a publication of The Brunswick News.  Story and photo colorizations by Josh Dukes

I’ve written a few times about how much downtown Brunswick is hopping these days.  Inevitably someone mentions, “imagine if the Oglethorpe Hotel was still here – just think of what that could be used for now!”  That is of course true, but there are a few other landmarks that Newcastle lost to the wrecking ball as midcentury modern aesthetics took hold in the 1950s.  One jewel at the top of my list of favorite lost spaces is the National Bank of Brunswick building, which once stood at 1509 Newcastle Street. 

Bank employees circa 1921. L to R- Myddleton Harris, James Oliver Taylor, John Ralston, E.V. Poole, Elisha Johnson, Harris S Evans, Edgar H Ware. Courtesy of Lisa Taylor

The National Bank of Brunswick was organized in 1894, with H. W. Reed serving as the first president and prominent businessman Columbia Downing as vice president.  In 1896, Reed resigned, and Downing took the lead at the bank. The bank was a reorganization of the failed First National Bank of Brunswick, which had ceased operations about a year prior.  That bank had already built a handsome 3-story building on the south side of Machen Square West on Newcastle Street a few years earlier, and the National Bank took over the operations at this grand headquarters. 

A streetcar line diverts through Machen Square beside
the Bank of Brunswick's marble arches

The bank building was designed by well-known Savannah-based architect Alfred Eichberg, who also designed Old City Hall and many other homes and public buildings around town. Although an excellent designer in the Queen Anne style that was popular at the time, Eichberg was especially proficient in the Romanesque Revival style with its extensive use of red brick and terra-cotta, a variety of arches, often spiky rooflines, and string courses and other decorative features in contrasting, rough-cut stonework. Brunswick’s Old City Hall boasts these features, as did the National Bank building, with its large marble arches up front and soaring arched windows along Machen Square. 

John Eugene duBignon served as 
president of The Brunswick Club

The first floor was banking space. A bumped-out first floor space to the south housed Western Union Telegraph offices.  The second floor consisted of bank employee offices with the third floor reserved for The Brunswick Club. This invite-only society was organized in 1890 right around the time the bank building was completed, with John Eugene duBignon serving as the president. 

Brunswick's streetcars began operation in September 1909 under the City and Suburban Railway Company. One of the streetcar storage sheds was located on Grant Street just behind the bank building.  A sidetrack curved off of Newcastle Street through Machen Square.  It was probably a common site for bankers to catch a glimpse of streetcars rumbling past the north-facing windows each morning as they entered service.  

In the 1940s, the formidable, marbled portico on Newcastle Street was enclosed and modernized for the times. During the late 1940s, the law offices of Gowen, Conyers, Fendig, and Dickey occupied a portion of the building.  In January of 1958, as they prepared to leave Newcastle Street for a new modern headquarters, the bank changed its name back to the First National Bank of Brunswick. They sold their 64-year-old bank building to the S.H. Kress Corporation.  Kress had operated as a neighbor to the bank since 1909, and they had big modernization plans in store for the block. 

In 1958, the National Bank of Brunswick building was demolished, and the Kress building scraped of all its original architectural features.  Both structures were replaced by a new Kress retail store, styled in what the Brunswick News called "a new look" that would replace "two monuments to the past." The two buildings were combined into a single two-story structure with a porcelain-enamel facade on the Newcastle Street frontage. At the time, it was the most expensive renovation project ever undertaken on Newcastle Street, costing $325,000.  The Chamber of Commerce requested that the developers include a public restroom- the only one in the downtown area- as well as a luncheon counter. 

The National Bank of Brunswick (then) and The Kress Hotel (now) 

Kress continued as downtown staple until 2000, when the mall-ification of America finally took its toll and the store’s parent company converted it to a Dollar Zone. Brunswick’s citizens fought to keep the S.H. Kress sign in place even with the change, which was fortunate as only a year later, Dollar Zone also went dark for good on Newcastle Street. The rest of the decade saw a variety of tenants take on portions of the cavernous space, with the building listed for sale off and on and hopes of some new, successful project. Those hopes were dashed more than once. 

One bright spot during this time was the rediscovery of some of the marble column headers that once graced the front portico of the National Bank of Brunswick building.  They were thoughtfully incorporated into the revitalization of Machen Square by Signature Square of Brunswick as part of the bid to restore all of Brunswick’s historic city squares.  The marble, now a dynamic water feature, holds guard across the street from its original home.  

The old bank site’s new life finally came in 2023, when a dazzling renovation brought forth The Kress, a boutique hotel with street front retail space.  Even though the building that once stood here is completely gone, a rooftop restaurant and cigar lounge at 1509 Newcastle Street has restored that 3rd story space that once housed The Brunswick Club.  If you do head to the top on an evening out, be sure to toast to those who did the same there 125 years ago.