Renovations underway on ‘old bank’ building on Gainesville square


The photo, above, shows the building which housed Bank of Gainesville (now Century Bank of the Ozarks) from 1927 to 1958 in its most current state before renovations began to bring it back to resemble its original appearance, pictured in the 1950s photo below.

The bank building was originally built from rock, as the photo shows above; however, sometime in the 1950s, the Harlins installed a green marble facade over the rock (below). When issues arose from the marble pulling away from the building, it was removed. Chris Harlin says the family still has the green marble stacked up in his parents’ house. After the marble was removed in the 1970s, a brick front was installed over the original rock. That has recently been removed, and the building will return to its original rock face in the next month or so.

Randy and Josh Dalton of Ava have begun gutting the old bank building in preparation for its renovation this year.

Part of the renovation will include replacing the floors, but Chris says that he hopes to incorporate some of the original black and white tile pieces that haven’t been damaged. The floor is shown in the photo, above, left, in 1954 when the bank’s operations were housed in the building. The photo above, right, shows what workers found when they peeled up layers of laminate and carpet. Chris said they also found the piece of wood pictured at right when they were renovating. It looks like it was written on a crate that the bank might have received, but the inscription says Mr. N. T. Harlin. There was no relative with those initials. Chris thinks they may mistakenly wrote N. T. instead of H. T. for Hugh Tan.

If you’ve taken a drive around Gainesville recently, you may have noticed the boarded-up front of a building on the west side of the square next to the old Ford Market building where The Hair Shop is housed. Hidden behind the wood, a transformation is unfolding. 

The building in question was the home of the Bank of Gainesville (renamed Century Bank of the Ozarks) from 1927 to the late 1950s. By the end of this year, it’s expected that the building will look a lot like it did back in those days.

Century Bank of the Ozarks CEO Chris Harlin told the Times that the Harlin family owned the old bank building from 1927 to 1995, even though the bank moved to its current location in 1969. Over the years, various renters occupied the building for stretches until it was sold in 1995. “And you know, I always kind of regretted it,” Chris admitted.

When the opportunity arose to purchase the “old bank” building back in 2020, Chris was thrilled. The building still has the 1920s original vault. Inside that vault was its antique “cannonball” safe, originally brought from West Plains by Joe Farmer’s team of horses in the summer of 1894. 

After they purchased the building in 2020, the Harlins moved the historic cannonball safe into the bank’s current lobby. The safe hadn’t been outside since 1929, when it was moved from the bank’s original small, wood-frame building next door, which had been home to Bank of Gainesville since it opened on July 24, 1894, with a then-impressive $5,000 in capital.

“We knew that we wanted to do something with [the building] at some point, but it took a while to get to it,” Chris said. Instead of renovating the space to be more modern, the Harlins have chosen to take inspiration from the early days of the bank. 

He hired Randy and Josh Dalton of Ava to begin the first phase of a transformation to return some of the building’s original charm. 

From 1927 to the late 1950s, the exterior of the building was a beautiful rock face, and the interior featured a molded tin ceiling and black and white checkerboard tile floor.

In the 1950s, Chris’s grandfather renovated the building, providing more modern conveniences. The rock exterior was covered in a green marble facade. The beautiful tin ceiling was sacrificed for the modern convenience of air conditioning. A drop ceiling was installed over top of the tin, which meant the wiring for the lights was punched through the metal. The flooring was also covered, with the tile hidden underneath a layer of laminate - and later, a layer of carpet. 

After the green marble facade began pulling away from the building, it was removed, and a layer of bricks was installed over the rock instead. That was the face of the building that people saw up until recently. 

“What we’re trying to do is take it back as close as we can to the way it would have looked from 1927 to about 1957-58,” Chris said. 

The Daltons have removed the brick, which has exposed the original rock facing from the 1920s. 

“But sometime in the past they had changed the shape of the [plate-glass] window, and when they did that in the 50s, they did some major tear-outs with the rock. The other thing that you can see in the photo with the marble front (pictured at the top of this page), is that they added a night drop to the front of the building, which caused them to tear a hole in the front of the building. So I had kind of hoped we would just take the brick off, and then the rock would all be there, and we could just clean it up. That’s not the case,” he said. 

But, the Daltons are working their magic, and it is expected that the rock work will look very similar to its original design when they are finished. 

While there are only a few of the beautiful tin ceiling tiles that could be salvaged, Chris has plans to reinstall a similar ceiling. 

“A couple of years ago, we took a few pieces of the original ceiling, and put it up in a small area, maybe an 8- by 8 section, of a room that was remodeled in our house. We took all the pieces that were still usable. There wasn’t much that wasn’t torn up,” Chris said. “We found a company that does tin metal ceilings, and they’re going to actually try and make a mold from the original ceiling tiles to make new tiles that we’ll install, matching the originals.”

That black and white tile floor is also in the works of being restored and featured as an accent.

“We’ve exposed [the original tile floor], and a lot of it’s torn up. What was interesting about that floor is that it’s literally mosaic tile. It’s not laminate. Laminate was laid over the top of it, but when we peeled that back, we saw that it’s actually half-inch or 3/4-inch squares of tile all laid down,” he said. 

Chris said that they’ve found that it would be hard to replicate the tile, so instead of re-tiling the whole space, they have another idea.

“What we’re probably going to do, because it’s going to be hard to mimic it, is find something that will compliment it to lay down. Then in a few spots, we might keep the tile exposed, maybe in like a 4-foot by 4-foot area. We know that it won’t match up with the new floor, so then we’ll probably pour epoxy over it, to bring it to be even.”

Chris expects the front face of the building - rockwork, door and window, will be finished up in the next month. The Daltons are then transitioning to another job before they’ll pick back up on the old bank project’s interior renovation this fall. 

“We hope to have it all done by the end of the year,” he said. 

So, what’s next for the building? That’s still being decided. 

“In this phase, we hope to get the whole space cleaned out, floor and ceiling in, any drywall that needs done and painted, so we have an open space where we can decide what we want to do,” he said. “ We’ve tossed around several ideas. It could be additional office space, or we could have it set up sort of museum-like and put bank memorabilia. We’re not totally certain yet.”

Regardless of the building’s future purpose, the restoration ensures that the legacy of the Harlins and the bank’s 130-year history is preserved. The generations who walked through those sturdy rock walls, across the black-and-white tile floors, and under the charming tin ceilings would be proud to see that the past is being brought into the future.

Ozark County Times

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