DUANE
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Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'm gonna give it to you straight with a little color on the side. Now, Hubbard, Texas got itself a bank pretty much right out of the gate. The town was founded in 1881, and not long after that, somebody set up a small private operation to handle folks' money.
Modest beginnings, sure, but that was just the opening act. The real drama didn't arrive until 1895, when Hubbard suddenly found itself with not one new bank, but two. Rod Oliver and H.
B. Allen opened their private firm, and Joe McDaniel opened the First National Bank. Two banks in one year in one town.
Somebody was feeling ambitious. Oliver and Allen, they didn't stop at just hangin' out a shingle. They built a two-story Victorian stone building right across the street from this very site.
Stone. Two stories. Victorian.
In a young Texas town, that was a statement. That building had presence. It had permanence.
Or so it seemed. Their firm failed in 1903, and just like that, the First National Bank moved in and made that grand stone building its home. It stayed there, doing its banking business, all the way until 1946.
Then the First State Bank, which had been organized back in 1909, took up quarters there when it moved to that location in 1961. Three different banks. One building.
Decade after decade, that old Victorian stone structure just kept on standing, kept on serving. And then came 1973. A storm rolled through, and the historic bank building was destroyed.
All that stone, all that Victorian ambition, gone. The marker you're passing right now is what's left of the telling.
What the marker says
The first bank in Hubbard was a small private operation started soon after the town was founded in 1881. In 1895 two banks were opened -- Rod Oliver and H. B. Allen's private firm and Joe McDaniel's First National Bank. To house their enterprise, Oliver and Allen built a 2-story Victorian stone building across the street from this site. After their firm failed in 1903, the structure was occupied by the First National Bank until 1946. It then became quarters for the First State Bank (organized 1909), which moved to that location in 1961. The historic bank building was destroyed by a storm in 1973.