CEGU

In 1924, the lot reflected the joy in the community as Woodlawn Trust and Savings Bank celebrated their 30th anniversary.¹ While bank deposits alone are not a proper measure of a bank’s success, they’re a decent proxy for how trusted a bank is. After all, who would deposit money somewhere shady? Using deposits as our yard stick, it seems that Woodlawn Trust and Savings Bank was very trusted by the community, servicing the largely white and middle-class community members. Over its 30 years of existence, deposits at the business increased over twenty-fold, reaching an astounding $146 million by 1923.^2,3 Its first two presidents were William D. McKey and Charles M. Poague, founders of the still existent McKey & Poague real estate agency. Even better, the banking company had recently migrated from its old location at 1204 East 63rd Street into a stunning five-story building at 1174-1180 East 63rd Street.⁵ In short, the bank earned its celebration.

Woodlawn Trust and Savings decline during the Great Depression also reflected challenges in the community. The banks’ death would be somewhat sudden. In 1930, it remained a trusted center of the community, even serving as a venue for a Boy Scout’s leaders conference. In 1931, it still held a respectable $145 million in deposits.⁷ But a year later the bank would voluntarily close to “conserve assets”—a diplomatic way of saying it closed to prevent people from withdrawing money it didn’t have on hand.⁸ At this time, it held only $69 million in deposits, under half of what it held in the prior year.⁹ The lot stood occupied, but the bank stood vacant.

The building’s vacancy persisted until 1935, when South East National Bank of Chicago would be founded and take over the building.¹⁰ Memories of the nationwide string of bank closures and failures during the early and middle Great Depression were still raw throughout the nation, and these sentiments still persisted in Woodlawn. Thus it would be natural for concerns to arise over the ability for South East National Bank to succeed, but if they did, C. A. Beutel–the bank’s president–didn’t let it show. Instead, shortly prior to the bank’s opening, Beutel asserted that “[e]very one seems to be happy over the fact that this community is again to have adequate banking facilities.”¹¹

Beutel’s optimism wasn’t misplaced. On April 6th, 1935, the South East National Bank opened in the 1174-1180 East 63rd Street building, and they had a strong showing. By close of operations on April 6th, the bank had already secured $7.5 million in deposits from 906 unique customers.¹² By the year’s end, the bank’s deposits would bloom to nearly $57 million with nearly 7,500 unique customers, with the increased usage also allowing the bank to grow their staff such that they nearly doubled in staffing by the end of the decade.¹³ South East National Bank’s growth would continue for the next fifteen years, and the bank entered 1950 with nearly $653 million in deposits, the most ever held in the 1174-1180 East 63rd Street building.¹⁴

1174-1180 East 63rd Street may now lie vacant, but the lot still reflects the life flowing through modern Woodlawn. Walking by the lot is like playing gacha. Sometimes, it will seem empty but for the grass that rustles in the wind blowing down the street. But other times, you’ll find that the fences on its bottom perimeter are covered in colorful yarn, or that children are playing in the field, or that someone is hard at work repairing their food truck. These informal uses of the lot are part of a broader trend in Woodlawn, in which vacant lots are used informally by community members as gathering places to share beverages, as the homes for compost piles and field days, or even just as convenient places to walk a dog. These informal uses will not last forever. Woodlawn is currently seeing a resurgence of development, with large initiatives like Woodlawn Central aiming to reintroduce skyscrapers and mixed-use development to the community. 1174-1180 East 63rd Street is currently up for sale, and may find itself swept up in these trends and redeveloped in the coming decades. But for now, vacant lots like 1174-1180 are strewn across Woodlawn, filled not with buildings but with history, charming memories of everyday life, and the hope for a better future.

Woodlawn’s lots may lie vacant, but they are far from dead.