Brief Bits

This is just a head’s up although many of you have known the news for a while. SunTrust will close the South White Street branch on Tuesday, April 10, and will open the new branch office at 13620 Capital Boulevard in the Harris Crossing shopping center on Friday, April 13.

SunTrust is the latest iteration of a bank that came to Wake Forest in the mid-1930s after two local banks failed during the early days of the Depression. S.W. Brewer’s Citizen Bank closed in late 1929 or early 1930 and Thomas Holding’s Bank of Wake, the first bank in town, held out until Dec. 17, 1931. George Watts Hill’s bank, the Durham Bank & Trust Company opened a branch here three or four years after those closings and afterwards built the Colonial-style one-story building at 123 South White Street which now houses the Parler real estate office and a clothing boutique.

Durham Bank & Trust Company changed its name to Central Carolina Bank and that later was shortened to CCB. In Wake Forest in 1972 Central Carolina Bank was planning to renovate that building because it was too small until several local men persuaded bank officials to build a new office and make the small building available to the town as the new home for the existing town library.

That new blue and white bank building between South White and Brooks opened in 1972 and by June of 1973 townspeople had raised $22,500 to match the bank’s offer and the town had a new library building. The former overnight deposit easily became a depository for late night book returns.

Through all the name changes SunTrust has been a good community bank and we will miss its presence in downtown.