Visiting the Yonkers National Bank and Trust Company in 1939


It's 1939, and in this imaginary journey, we're going to time-travel to Yonkers, New York in 1939 and visit a bank.

It's been ten years now since the crash, and a friend of mine has been encouraging me to put my money in a bank, since they can be trusted nowadays. I'm not so sure about all of this, but I'm going to give it a try!

By the way, this image is from the Duke University website ROAD (Resource of Outdoor Advertising Descriptions). Their interest is in historic advertising, and mine is in time-traveling. And to be very precise, we're traveling to July 10th of 1939, and it's five minutes to two in the afternoon. The bank is open!

I'm carrying my life savings in a sock, and while it's not much, it's all I've got. I've been told that there are new laws in place for banks because of what happened in 1929. The rules are much stricter than they used to be, and hopefully that will make it safer for someone like me. They tell me that my money earns interest, too! Hope it's there when I go back for it!


OK, now that I've deposited my money, I'm walking across Broadway. That's me there, next to the car parked next to the no parking sign. Look at those beautiful cars! I wonder if I'll be able to afford one someday?


I hope the police officer doesn't see me jay-walking! He probably won't, he has a lot of traffic to contend with. I'm going to try to get on that trolley. Let's see, do I have a nickel?


And now a word from our sponsor. Ain't it always the way? Sorry, but advertising has always been big business, and companies pay a lot of money for billboards, and want to know it their ads are up and visible. So someone in 1939 drove to Yonkers, and wherever the billboards were, to take photos as proof. This billboard on top of Ligget's Drug Store is for Coca Cola, with the slogan "Thirst asks nothing more". I don't know about you, dear reader, but I grew up in the latter half of the 20th Century, and to me the slogan for Coke will always be "The Real Thing". Anyway, that's the ad.


The church there on the left is still there, as is the curve of Broadway at Hudson Street, so it was pretty easy to exactly identify the location on Google maps. The building for the Yonkers National Bank and Trust Company is still there, too. I wonder how much interest I would have earned since 1939?



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