Farmers and Merchants Bank - Pilot Point Commercial Historic District - Pilot Point, TX
N 33° 23.804 W 096° 57.692
14S E 689584 N 3697127
A Pilot Point landmark for well over a hundred years, the old Farmers and Merchants Bank building at 100 N Washington St is a contributing building to the Pilot Point Commercial Historic District. Today, it is used as an art gallery.
Waymark Code: WMWJFM
Location: Texas, United States
Date Posted: 09/11/2017
Views: 2
Pilot Point City Historian Jay Melugin's entry in Arcadia's
Images of America series, "Pilot Point", is a great place to get acquainted with this interesting little North Texas town, and the bank is difficult to miss in all of the photos from 1899 and later. In fact, its presence
is sorely missed in the few photos from the early 1890s. Mr. Melugin calls this building "the best example of Richardsonian-Romanesque architecture in the United States." The Farmers and Merchants Bank was founded in 1899, and this was its home until it closed during the Great Depression, merging its assets with the Pilot Point National Bank just a block to the east (now the police department).
The National Register's Registration Form provides both a short and long description, and dates the building to both 1896 and 1898:
Buff brick, stone and cast stone 2-part commercial block with primary entrance on a chamfered corner. Stylistically eclectic, this building features elements of Romanesque Revival, Tudor Revival and Beaux Arts. The 1896 Farmers and Merchants Bank is the focal point of the square. It closed in 1929 and never reopened as a bank.
The Farmers and Merchants Bank is the most architecturally significant building in the district, as it is the only building that fully displays characteristics of high styles found in architect-designed buildings of the late Victorian Era. Stylistically eclectic, this building features elements of Romanesque Revival, Tudor Revival and Beaux Arts styles, and serves as an important landmark on a prominent corner of the square. The 2-story buff brick and stone building features an asymmetrical plan, with a chamfered corner entrance set atop a short flight of stairs, flanked by a pair of modified Corinthian columns supporting a lintel inscribed with the bank's name. The lower floor features three prominent arched windows, two of which flank the entrance on the east and south elevations. The upper floor features paired sash windows; the paired windows on the upper floor of the corner pavilion are separated by cast stone columns. A projecting stone stringcourse unifies the pavilion and west wing of the building, while the frontispiece of the chamfered corner is topped by an elaborate curved Tudor Revival gable. The bank closed in 1929, and the building never housed another bank.
Both Mr. Melugin and Frank Ballinger's wonderful Bonnie and Clyde Hideout website mention this bank as a filming location for "Bonnie and Clyde", and "Pilot Point" has a few photos of the filming. As Farmers and Merchants closed down in 1929, the real Barrow Gang couldn't have robbed this bank, but a sign on a building just down the block on W Main Street notes that it once housed a cafe that Bonnie and Clyde liked to visit (but it references the 1920s, when they had not yet met...given all their traveling through this area, though, it is certainly possible). After the Barrow gang hops in the car and Buck wishes Blanche a happy birthday with the glasses he took from the security guard, pay close attention to when the police whiz down W Main St in pursuit. Right next to the "Food Store" building is a small building with a shorter roof, and that was the cafe, vacant today. Note that the Pilot Point National Bank, which was still here in the 1960s, is located on the northeast outside corner of the square, and perhaps that was the one that was robbed. Today, it's just "Point Bank."