01/01/2026
First Then and Now of the year includes the first building built as a bank on Main Street.
These three buildings have been a fixture on Main Street for many years. They are listed in the historic register for commercial buildings. Everyone will recognize the Nichol’s Nook Coffee shop of the left. As shown in the photo of the right you can see the date of construction was 1892. The white frame structure was built by Walter Allison who was also an original stockholder in the 1930 Bank of Springville. It is officially listed as the Allison Krkland Building. There nineteen rows of “fish-scale” shingles. Note how the Now version shows that the windows have been opened above where awnings once covered them. Although the building appears to be square, there is actually a gabled roof line behind the solid face of the building. Before the days of a dedicated post office the building also served as the Springville Post Office in 1898. Local merchants often served as Post Masters. Their buildings would then serve the public’s mail needs with the merchant benefiting from the increased foot traffic for the business. Years later, Mrs Allison operated a Millinery Shop in the building.
The two buildings to the right in the photo were built in 1907 and 1908. The building in the middle was built as a commercial building and is listed as the Forman/Allison Building. The brickwork and that of the adjoining building include bands of unmatched corbeling at the top of the roof line. J.L. Forman built the building and it was originally used as a drugstore and mercantile business. Mr. Forman served as vice president of the adjacent Bank.
The building to the far right is the old Bank of Springville. It is of similar construction to the Forman/Allison Building. Both structures have an arched brick entrance. It was built specifically to be used as a bank. If you are walking along Main Street and take a look through the front windows, you can see that the law office that now occupies the space has retained the old bank vault as well as fireplace mantels (in the days before central heating). During the Great Depression years, many local banks failed after a “run on the bank,” occurred. The name explains what happened. Depositors would hear that the bank was about to fail and to keep from losing their money, they would run to the bank and withdraw their investments. These were days before FDIC Federally insured banks to prevent their failure. If you had money in a local bank and the bank closed, you simply lost your money. The help protect banks during the great depression, Pres Roosevelt called for a Bank Holiday, to allow banks enough time to call in loans and have cash on hand in the event of a run on the bank. The Bank Holiday allowed the banks to simply close--as if they were on a holiday. Hence the stories of people preferring to bury their money in their own backyard instead of using a local bank. To insure investors that the bank was secure, The Bank of Springville arranged to have a large sum of cash shipped by armored rail car from Birmingham to Springville, accompanied by marshals to protect it. The cash was proudly displayed on the counter of the old bank to show that the bank had plenty of cash. As a result, the story is told that only one investor withdrew their cash from the local bank during this time. Robberies were also a community calamity when they happened. If enough cash was stolen, it could cause the bank to have to close, or lead to a panic where deposits would be withdrawn. There was no insurance against such robberies in the days before federally insured bank deposits. The Bank of Springville Experienced two such robberies in 1932 and 1933. The robbery in May 1932 resulted in the bank losing over $7,000. That may not sound all that severe but in today’s spending dollars, it would have been in excess of $165,000. The January, 1933 robbery left bullet hole scars in the building. In both robberies, bank teller, Homer D. Brown pursued the robbers after they ran from the bank, firing his own gun in an attempt to stop the thieves. He fearlessly showed his courage and dedication in chasing the thieves out of town.
One last item to see in the old photo is the fence between the buildings. If you look closely, you’ll see what appears to be a driveway into that space. The old register of historic places states that there was a wooden structure with a flat roof and heavy wooden door that served as the city ice house. We can now purchase plastic bags of crushed ice at any time throughout the year. Back during the days before mechanized refrigeration, northern states would harvest large blocks of ice during the winter from local lakes. Since the temperatures during the winter in the south seldom allow for a solid freeze of any depth in local waters, the solution was a northern ice trade. Ice was collected during winter months in huge quantities and then it was stored underground in sawdust to insulate it. Springville was fortunate to have a railway that passed through town and ice was most likely shipped in insulated rail cars covered in sawdust and then stored in the local ice house. Companies would then deliver blocks of ice to local homes using a horse and wagon. These blocks would be placed in insulated boxes (forerunners of refrigerators). One such, “ice box,” can be seen on display at the Springville City Museum. I can remember as a young boy going with my father to our local ice house in Sheffield--which by then had equipment to produce our own frozen blocks of ice. We would go in our family station wagon and my father would back up to the ice house doorway and the doors would swing open and the amazing coolness was so much fun to feel--especially in the heat of summer. A large block of ice would be placed in the back of the station wagon and once we got home, my brothers and I were given ice picks to break the ice in the small enough pieces to use in our own ice cream freezers. Can you imagine what would happen today of kids the ages of my brothers and I were handed ice picks to chop up ice? They are basically nails with a wooden handle. We then took turns turning the hand crank on the ice cream cooler to make the ice cream freeze--the process could take an eternity--especially on a hot summer’s day. My mother loved trying new ice cream recipes. She would make a custard on the stove, using whole milk/cream, eggs, sugar and vanilla extract, along with fresh ingredients. My favorite flavors were peach and strawberry ice cream which was usually made when the fruit was in season and locally available. Otherwise, good old home made vanilla ice cream was always a treat as well.
