Greenville Building and Loan Association

Greenville was a railroad town by 1886, when this association was chartered. The Katy arrived in 1880 and the East Line and Red River in February 1881, so the Dallas and Greenville Railway of 1886 was a third line, where the plaque speaks of a second, according to the Handbook of Texas. The same source counts 3,000 people by 1884, two banks, cotton gins, flour mills and an opera house seating 800, and calls Greenville a leading cotton market by the mid-1880s. The St. Louis Southwestern arrived in 1887.

What the plaque says

Greenville Building and Loan Association This financial institution was chartered by the state of Texas on December 17, 1886, as the Greenville Building and Loan Association. The formation of the association came as a second railroad line was constructed to Greenville, signaling the future of Hunt County Seat as an important center for trade and commerce. The original directors were Thomas Jefferson Gee, I. Popper, Ira D. Wyse, T. E. Byrd, Ephraim W. Briscoe, Frank P. Alexander, and Asher Mandelbaum. Many of the first directors and stockholders were individuals who had migrated to Greenville and became active leaders in its early development. Their belief in the town's potential was reflected in the establishment of the association, the second oldest continuing thrift institution in the state. In the mid-1930s, during the height of the nation's economic depression, the directors successfully converted the association to a federal mutual savings and loan institution. Renamed Centennial Savings Bank in 1983, when it became a federally-chartered savings bank, the institution has continued to reflect the community support advocated by its founders. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836-1986

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Audie Murphy / American Cotton Museum — 1.6 mi
  A Greenville museum of Hunt County's military heroes, including Audie Murphy, and of cotton, which keeps the engine of what it says was the world's largest inland cotton compress.
• Rockwall County Historical Foundation & Museum — 24 mi
  A small museum in Harry Myers Park that keeps the evidence on Rockwall's rock wall, sandstone dikes that geologists call natural and folk tales call built.
• Cooper Lake State Park — 30 mi
  Two units on Jim Chapman Lake, a Corps reservoir proposed in the late 1930s, stalled by a lawsuit until 1984 and dedicated in 1991, with a 10.5-mile equestrian trail and wildlife land around it.

More markers nearby

• Greenville — steps away
• Greenville's Electric Light Plant — steps away
• Hunt County's First Railroad — steps away
• The Seven Courthouses of Hunt County — steps away