This Bank was founded in 1890, and the goal of this new building design was to reinforce the fact that this is the hometown Bank; that it has been here for 125+ years; and is here to stay.

The exterior is designed to recall the era of the founding of the Bank, and fit in with the historic fabric of downtown Bowie, which consists mainly of 1880s to 1920s brick commercial buildings. The elements and materials reinforce this, such as the brick type, the details of the brick patterns and corbels, the scale, form, and type of windows, and the way that the street elevation is at the edge of the sidewalk. It is not set back like a “cake on a platter”, but instead continues on the block face line of the old historic buildings.

1890s vault doors were salvaged from the existing location and restored. They have been relocated, along with the new vault, along a “vault wall” behind the Customer Service Area.

Bowie is the biggest town in Montague County, but it is not the County Seat. Because of this there is no outdoor public space in town, like one typically sees around a courthouse. This new building is adjacent to the existing Bank, which had been updated so many times that it no longer had a connection to the fabric of the neighboring downtown buildings.  Alongside the new building, the existing bank structure was partially demolished and refaced to recall the cotton warehouses of the early 20th century.  This freed up space for a type of public square that now highlights the corner. The Bank owns and maintains this space, and allows it to be used for community events.

Bank technology and interior use of space in a bank has changed substantially over recent years. Long teller lines are no longer needed and less people come inside the Bank. The new lobby area makes room for Customer Service Representatives, who can provide teller functions, open new accounts, and provide other services. Because of this change, the traditional teller line has been transformed into a free floating station, where the CSR has state of the art technology at their fingertips to serve all of the customer’s needs. This provides efficiency both for the customer and for the Bank.