LANDMARKS COUNTY HISTORICAL SITES : Bank Sprouted to Serve Growers

* HISTORY: A branch of Farmers & Merchants Bank was established in 1911 in Saticoy. Later it merged with Security First National Bank, which in 1968 became Security Pacific Bank. In 1970, the branch moved to a new site at Telephone Road and Petit Avenue in Ventura. The old building in Saticoy has since housed a credit union, a clothing store and a gun shop. The building was designated as a county historical landmark in 1988.

* LOCATION: 1203 Los Angeles Ave. in Saticoy.

* HOURS: The building is vacant.

The town of Saticoy, founded in 1887 on the site of the Indian village of Sa’aqtik’oy, had grown by 1911 to the point that merchants and ranchers needed a local bank.

Lima bean and walnut growers flourished, and a Southern Pacific Railway depot had been built in town when Farmers & Merchants Bank established a Saticoy branch.

Los Angeles architects Henry F. Withey and Francis Pierpont Davis were hired to design the building. The builder was Edward Alplanalp.

According to a local newspaper advertisement of the period, the bank owned assets of $495,857.52 on Nov. 1, 1913; by March 6, 1918, it had grown to more than $1 million in assets. “Proof of good service is constant service,” the ad said.

The only building in Saticoy in a neoclassical style, the landmark is a rectangular one-story structure of reinforced concrete. It is 30 feet wide and 50 feet long on a cement foundation.

The main door in the center of the facade is recessed on the porch to accommodate a decorated entryway. On each side of the doorway is a free-standing Ionic column. Platform steps rise from the street to the porch.

The interior is partially paneled in dark oak, and the vault doorway is ornamented with plaster pillars similar to those at the entry.

“I remember going into the bank at age 5 or 6 and being impressed by the tellers’ cages and the meeting room in the back, where people went in to apply for bank loans or such. I remember the green-tinted glass with diamonds across the top,” said Jim Sharp of Saticoy, whose grandfather was on the bank’s original board of directors.

The bank’s walls are three feet thick--four feet in the vault area. Trudy Vail, who began working as a machine bookkeeper and teller for the bank in 1955, recalled the effect of those walls.

“It was cold in winter and hot in summer. You wouldn’t believe how hard it was to heat up the building when we’d come back after a three-day weekend,” she said.