In 1831, Colonel Moses Lewis purchased the land where Gainesville is currently located, and he had the land divided into lots for a town. The new town grew very rapidly and by 1840 it had become the third largest town in the state of Alabama, with a population of over 4,000. Gainesville was a major port, shipping 6,000 bales of cotton to Mobile each year by steamboats on the Tombigbee River.
Built ca. 1838, the Gainesville Bank was a sign of the thriving city of Gainesville in the mid-1800s. It was the oldest bank in West Alabama and was even allowed to print its own money. After the war, the bank struggled to survive, a victim of the depressed Black Belt economy and the fact that the expanding railroads drew freight traffic away from the river. In the 1880s, the bank closed its doors. It remained vacant for many years. In the late 1970s, the building had deteriorated to the point that it was in danger of destruction,
In 1970, the Warner Foundation, a private non-profit philanthropic organization, acquired the bank, dismantled it, and moved it to the Tuscaloosa where it was re-erected and restored as part of a complex of historic early Alabama buildings. In the early 2000s, the Gainesville Preservation Society successfully returned the bank to its original location in Gainesville. The old bank building is one of the town’s most recognizable landmarks.
This old bank building is located on State Street where it overlooks the Gainesville Park and Bandstand. (Google maps – 32.823301,-88.158513).
Sources: 1) Gainesville, Alabama Tour Guide; 2) National Register of Historic Places “Gainesville” MRA; 3) The Tuscaloosa News, April 1, 2006 edition.