Lemon Grove’s Early Banks are Gone With the Wind

In 1949 Lemon Grove got its first bank, First National Trust & Savings, corner of Imperial (now Lemon Grove Avenue) and Golden. For years the building was home to Union Bank, which moved half a block south about a year ago to sit next to Bank of America on Lemon Grove Avenue. The original bank building stands empty awaiting its fate.

Once the town also had San Diego Trust & Savings and Crocker National Bank, which succeeded U. S. National Bank in the familiar white building beside the post office.

Crocker hit the ground running. The stuffed “Crocker Spaniel” was given to those who opened accounts. Excitement reigned when Crocker offered automated teller machine service, prompting customers to speak to it as though it were a person (“Hello, can you help me?”). When the bank was absorbed by Wells Fargo in 1986, other businesses occupied the building.

Most recently, the venerable Berry’s Athletic Supply, which bought the place in 1992, sold out and moved to 7946 Lemon Grove Avenue, the former site of Grove Office Supply. The building and large parking lot stood empty, but for a big sign heralding the future: CityMark, the developer that built the apartment building next to the two Citronicas at the entrance to town, owned the site and bulldozed it on Nov. 18, 2021.

Rising in its place will be a five-story square apartment building bounded by Lester, Grove and Broadway. This will undoubtedly help California’s chronic housing shortage, but not its soaring rents. People form banks and build multi-family housing for one reason: to make money. Whatever the traffic will bear becomes the norm.

Crocker was founded by railroad baron Charles Crocker in San Francisco in the late 19th century. In the crazy-quilt life of banks, Crocker Bank was sold and resold. At one point most of its top 70 executives lost their jobs.

You remember the banking theme in the movie, “I Remember Mama,” starring Irene Dunne. Worried that her children would feel insecure if there was no bank account, she would pile up coins (her husband’s salary) on the kitchen table and allocate them to the butcher, the baker, the landlord—and the bank. The children grew up thinking there was a financial floor under the family stashed in a mythical bank.

When a hometown bank is sold and resold or goes out of business, or when your mortgage is sold and resold, there is a seismic shift in family security. We can’t go back to a safer time, for that is as mythical as Mama’s bank. All we can do is marshall our funds, save not fritter, and teach our children the value of saving for that inevitable rainy day. God bless the child who’s got his own.