The Bank of Florence

The bank's manager, James Monroe Parker, lived in the rooms upstairs, which the museum keeps as they looked when his family left around 1860. In other years the building served as a bar, a horse stable, a grocery and the Florence telephone exchange. John D. Brisbin's group bought the second bank in 1909; it folded in 1930, was reorganized in 1932 and moved to 30th and Ames as the North Side Bank in 1939. Parker's great-granddaughter Zerlina Brisbin Lewis gave the building away in 1966, and it joined the National Register on October 15, 1969.

What the plaque says

The Bank of Florence The Bank of Florence was chartered by the Nebraska Territorial legislature on January 18, 1856. It was located in this substantial building, constructed during the same year. Sheet steel one quarter inch thick, shipped by river steamboat from Pennsylvania steel mills, was used in conjunction with three foot thick masonry to build the vault. The bank was owned and operated by the respected Iowa financial firm of Cook and Sargent. It played an important role in the aspiration of the town of Florence to become the leading transportation and financial center of Nebraska. Frontier banking practices were lax and along with other banks in Nebraska Territory the Bank of Florence issued quantities of unsecured "wild cat" currency and financed speculation in land. Weakened by the financial panic of 1857 the Bank failed in 1859. Only one bank in Nebraska Territory survived the Panic. The building housed a variety of subsequent business operations including a second Bank of Florence which was chartered in 1904. It is now restored as it appeared in territorial times. Florence Historical Foundation Historical Land Mark Council

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Winter Quarters and the Mormon Pioneer Cemetery — 0.3 mi
  The Latter-day Saint camp of 1846 to 1848 on Omaha land in what is now Florence, where hundreds died the first winter, and the cemetery and trail center beside it.
• Malcolm X Birthsite — 3.2 mi
  The North Omaha lot where Malcolm Little was born in May 1925 and his family was driven out by the Klan, saved by Rowena Moore and now planned as a cultural center.
• Joslyn Art Museum — 5.4 mi
  Omaha's free art museum, a 1931 Art Deco memorial with two modern pavilions, and the keeper of Karl Bodmer's watercolors from the upper Missouri in 1833 and 1834.
• The Durham Museum (Omaha Union Station) — 6.2 mi
  Omaha's 1931 Union Station, Gilbert Stanley Underwood's Art Deco depot for the Union Pacific, closed to trains in 1971 and kept as a city museum with its waiting room intact.

More markers nearby

• Winter Quarters — steps away
• Potter's Field — 1.6 mi
• Crook House — 1.9 mi
• Fort Omaha — 2.1 mi