DUANE
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Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Now, most folks know the 1930s oil boom turned East Texas inside out, and Kilgore was right in the thick of it. Economic development was roaring, and leading that charge was the Kilgore National Bank.
But here's where the story gets interesting. All around them, the Great Depression was grinding the country down to its bones. Banks were failing.
Businesses were folding. And yet, the board of directors of the Kilgore National Bank looked out at what the oil boom had brought to their town, looked at all that prosperity sitting right in the middle of a national catastrophe, and decided the moment called not for caution but for something bold. They were going to build.
In 1937, they commissioned a man named James L. Downing, an architect out of Henderson, to design their new structure. Now Downing wasn't just drawing up four walls and a roof.
He reached for art moderne and art deco styling, and he used every line of it to project one very deliberate message: progress. Right here, right now, in the depths of the Depression, this building was going to stand and say something. And it did.
The bank called it home all the way through the 1970s, decades of Kilgore's business life passing through those stylish doors. Today it stands as a reminder of Kilgore's early business history, a building that was never just a building. It was a statement.
Turns out, sometimes the boldest thing you can do is build something beautiful when the rest of the world is falling apart.
What the marker says
Led in the town's economic development following the 1930s oil boom. Prosperity in the midst of the Great Depression influenced the board of directors to build this structure in 1937. Designed by Henderson architect James L. Downing, who used art moderne and art deco styling to project progress, it housed the bank until the 1970s. It now serves as a reminder of Kilgore's early business history. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1990