Converted banks as other buildings

In My Humble Opinion
1

I once saw a bank getting built over the course of weeks/months as it was along my commute. Fairly early on, the vault was brought in by truck and moved into place with a crane and the bank more or less built around it. In the last couple months, I’ve also seen a couple banks close. One is for sale, one is a physical therapy building and one became a fitness center (which then closed and is now a community center, I think). Can’t help but wonder what they do with the vault in those instances. It obviously isn’t going anywhere but do they remove the door or just have the town’s most secure coat closet? Seems a bit overkill to say “We can put the human resources files and office supplies in here”. I can think of plenty of cool building concepts for a bank-turned-whatever: bars, restaurants, game shops, etc that could integrate the vault but what does a real estate office or veterinary office do with it?

Anyone visit or work in a bank-turned-something else?

2

Our favorite pizza place in town is in a converted bank building. It looks like they just took off the door to the vault and turned that space into part of the arcade.

3

The school district where I coached has it’s office in a former bank. The vault and door are still there.
Even the interior(counters and offices) is unchanged with the addition of cubicle walls.

4

There was a Bank of America at the corner of Wilshire & Grand in downtown LA (across the street from the One Wilshire building, for those in the know). When I was back visiting LA a few months ago, it had been turned into a bar/restaurant called Karl Strauss Brewing Company. I stuck my head inside because we were looking for a place showing the Dodger game that night, but since they weren’t, we didn’t stick around. It wasn’t immediately obvious to me what happened to the vault.

I found an article that talks about the brewery and mentions that it used to be a BofA, but doesn’t say anything about the actual conversion. There are pictures of the new space in the article, but I could not find any interior “before” pictures, so you’ll just have to imagine how it looked before (pretty much like any BofA, except really, really big).

5

There’s a CVS pharmacy in an old bank building on 8th Ave and 14th Street in Manhattan. It’s pretty nice inside, as far as drug stores go.

Here’s an article about the building. Apparently it also used to be a Balducci’s.

6

That’s one swanky looking CVS.

7

A BBQ restaurant took over a local bank building here. It’s a perfect setup for a restaurant. The vault, with door intact but rendered unable to close, is part of the dining area and seats about 15 people.

8

A coffee roaster / coffee house place in a trendy part of St. Louis did exactly the same thing back in the early 1990s.

From the outside the building looked just like the 1930s neighborhood bank it originally was. Inside they kept the fancy dark wood walls & tin ceilings. And the vault. Whose door was propped open and whose interior was lined with ancient safety deposit boxes. a couple small cocktail tables and chairs filled the vault to cozy bordering on crowded.

I just did some searching for a cite & it appears they’ve since remodeled the interior and there are now no pix of the vault on their website. Darn; it was *tres *cool in a retro way.

OTOH, Google images provides a couple of OK pix of how I remember it: "shaw coffee" vault - Google Search

9

There’s a Walgreen’s in Chicago’s Bucktown neighborhood built in an old bank. The vault is full of vitamins, and they call it the Vitamin Vault.

10

The Yellow Brick Bank restaurant in Shepherdstown, West Virginia (now the Mi Degollado II) used the vault as a wine cellar.

11

Same use in an ice cream parlor in Harvard Square.

12

There are a lot in Manhattan.

Trinity Place Bar & Restaurant

Actually, here’s an entire web site full of them (incuding friedo’s CVS):

13

I’ve always wanted to buy an old branch building and convert it into a Subway and put the sandwiches into the pneumatic tube for my drive-thru.

Surprised I’ve never actually seen one IRL

14

One of my favorite places in Cincinnati is Teller’s, a restaurant in an old bank. I think they used the vault for private parties but also general seating when it wasn’t reserved. They left the door on it. Really cool place.

15

The Lyrical Ballad Bookstore in Saratoga Springs, NY, has an old bank vault in the back; they use it to keep rare books.

16

There’s one here they have deemed the ‘three floors of fun’ as it has a bar in the lower level, a restaurant in the main level and another bar in the top level. I don’t know if they still have a vault but they have an old safe that sits out in the restaurant. When it was a bank, it was robbed by Bennie and Stella Dickson in 1938.

17

Back when I was a small child, in the late 50’s, there was a small bank that held my parents mortgage to the house, where they made their payments.

It’s now a cafe and my favorite place to eat breakfast. In one corner you can see, near the floor, a heavy round metal safe door.

18

Many many years ago there was a small theatre in an old bank in Pasadena. The stage and seating was all in the open lobby area. The teller windows and big vault were still in place.

19

This is the former law courts branch of the Bank of England

It’s quite a nice pub.

20

The Broker, a steakhouse in downtown Denver, is in the former Denver National Bank building; the vault is a private dining room. They used to have several other locations in Denver and Boulder, but the downtown location is the only one remaining (and they seem to get most of their business these days from Groupons; it used to be A Big Deal to go to The Broker).

On my commute home I drive by a marijuana shop that’s in a former bank, but I imagine that might be fairly common.