Addison State Bank

Duane's take

Here's what the official marker has to say, and I'll tell it my way. Back in 1912, somebody looked at the new railroad community of Addison, Texas, and decided this town needed a bank. So they organized one: the Addison State Bank.

And the very next year, 1913, they finished the building to house it. Brick, solid, with corbeled brickwork running along the cornice at the roofline. That little decorative detail wasn't just showing off.

It was a statement. This community had arrived. Now, a railroad town in those days was a place full of momentum (goods moving, people moving, money moving), and a bank was the anchor that held it all in place.

The Addison State Bank stood at the center of that. For a while. Because here's where the story takes its turn.

The bank didn't make it. By 1926, it was gone. Finished.

The building, though; that sturdy brick structure with its fine cornice work; it didn't go anywhere. It reinvented itself as a mercantile store and kept right on serving the community for many years after the bank's demise. Now most of what made up the original Addison townsite has long since vanished into time and progress and the relentless sprawl of Dallas County.

But that building is still standing. One of the few remaining structures from the original townsite. Brick outlasted the bank.

The walls outlasted the boom. And that corbeled cornice is still up there on the roofline, keeping watch over a town that barely resembles what it once was; quiet testimony that 1913 was a very real year, and Addison was a very real place.

What the marker says

This building was completed in 1913 to house the Addison State Bank, which had been organized the previous year to serve the new railroad community of Addison. After the bank's demise in 1926, the brick commercial structure served as a mercantile store for many years. Featuring corbeled brickwork in the cornice along the roofline, the Addison State Bank building is one of the few remaining structures from the original townsite. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark -- 1984