Banking in Red Hook
by Bernard Greenwald

I opened my account at the First National Bank of Red Hook on Market Street in 1969. Direct deposit did not exist then and I remember waiting every two weeks for the physical delivery of the Bard payroll so I could draw on my account. My salary was $6,500 a year and with colleges throughout the United States crashing in flames, there was a short period when the receipt of my money did not seem absolutely dependable.

For years I dealt with Mr. Stan Lynk, first when he was a teller, and then later when he became a bank officer. Mr. Lynk was a tall, courtly gentleman in a polyester suit. He had come to the bank in 1930, a recent graduate of Hudson High School.

I don't think they had checks imprinted with the customers' name and address then; and I believe, in a pinch, you could write out a check on a blank slip of paper and the bank would honor it. Never a competent arithmetician, I might have written my checks on some material more elastic than paper since they seemed to bounce so easily. Overdraft accounts did not exist.

Prior to the end of the Civil War, merchants and farmers in Red Hook had to do their banking in Hudson, Rhinebeck or Poughkeepsie. In 1864, while people were still reeling from the effects of the war and before the village was even incorporated, a committee was formed to establish a bank in Red Hook. It consisted of William Chamberlain, Jacob Elseffer and Robert Massoneau. The First National Bank of Red Hook had 59 stockholders and initial capital stock of $150,000.

The original location of the First National was what is now the Village Building on Prince Street and Route 9, with the Village Police in the back. Much was made of the state-of-the-art vault with its four-ton door so perfectly hung a child of four could easily close it. The vault was provided with a fresh air supply and means for communicating with the outside should someone be inadvertently locked in. The door can be seen today inside the current Village building. The bank moved to its current location in a new building erected on West Market Street in the 60s when the Prince Street building was sold to the Village. In 1984 the First National merged with Key Bank and with that change came the availability of all sorts of banking products. When I wrote my account number, 3-117-114-1, tellers would often remark that it indicated it was one of the oldest accounts in the bank, but regrettably I eventually had to relinquish it for a new account that included services I really needed.

By that time Mr. Lynk had retired and I was dealing primarily with Jean Cotting, a dignified older lady who walked with a cane and was always warm and friendly. She told me how her father had been employed by the bank in 1918 and that she and her family lived in an apartment upstairs in the Prince Street building. The notion of a mom and pop bank with a family living on the premises reminds me of what a rural, small, hometown environment Red Hook must have had in those days.

The other day as I stood in the tellers' line, Nancy Rutter and Irene McLaughlin were holding two $50 bills up to the light and comparing them. One was genuine and the other apparently bogus. They were happy to include me in the conversation. (Could you imagine this happening in a mid town Manhattan bank?) After I came up with five or six comparisons (I'm used to "compare and contrast" since it's just what I ask students in my art classes at Bard to do all the time) they facetiously offered me a job (apparently they came too late on the scene to know my reputation as a bouncer of checks). In the end I admitted that, as a teacher of printmaking at Bard, I am not a stranger to the art of engraving paper qualities and the connoisseurship printed images. It was then that Ms. Rutter also revealed herself as a painter and printmaker (when not working at the bank).

Ms. Rutter studied art at NYU and the Art Students League; she and her photographer husband Walter have lived in Ireland and in Paris, where she worked at Atelier Seventeen. Ms Rutter took a part-time teller's job in 1996 at the Key Bank in Copake, where they live; later she became a branch manager and an area manager, but persevered with her art. She is excited about the art scenes around Ancram and Red Hook as well as her bank work and is planning an exhibition at the Richard Sena Gallery in Hudson in the early spring.

With thanks to Mary Bayer, Branch Manager, for information about the bank's history.