Progressive banking at Commerce, 1920s style.
The main entrance to the home office of Savings
Bank of Mendocino County, in Ukiah, CA.
The columns are from the original headquarters,
since replaced by a modernist structure.
Dallas in 1914. During the Great Depression, Frost experienced a heavy withdrawal of funds, but because of its sound
assets and liquidity, Frost survived and
became the largest bank in San Antonio.
Regional growth was succeeded by statewide growth. On 7/7/77, Frost merged
with Houston-based Cullen Bankers to
form Cullen/Frost Bankers, Inc., creating
the eighth largest holding company in
the state at the time. The company began
trading on the NASDAQ. Acquisition was
one of the few avenues open to growth
because branch banking was not passed
by the Texas legislature until 1986. Evans,
chairman of Cullen/Frost Bankers, was
named chief executive officer in 1997, the
first non-Frost family member to hold
that position. That same year the institution shifted its listing to the NYSE.
At only 108 years old, the Savings Bank
of Mendocino County (SBMC), based
in Ukiah, is younger than the other two,
and is also different in that it is privately
held. But many of the guiding principles
that have sustained the other two larger
institutions also carry on in the hills and
canyons of north-central California.
Charles Mannon, chairman of the board,
is a second-generation Ukiahn who went
away to law school but came back to practice; he had worked summers in the bank,
but did not intend it to be his career. Yet, he
has been with the institution for 35 years.
The region, about 50 miles inland from
the ocean, has always been agricultural.
Today that is most notably wine, but Mannon remembers picking hops in his youth.
The hop flower crop gave way to orchard
fruits over time and eventually to viticulture. Lumber was also a major business,
and some of that remains today.
Mendocino County is far enough from
San Francisco that it has not been battered
by the worst of the real estate vo ][] K