Oct 17 2011

The Cleveland Trust Co.

Brent

bank vault safe

Today’s Photo: The Cleveland Trust Co. vault

This large vault, in the basement of Cleveland Trust Co., was where many Clevelanders once kept their most valuable possessions. If you look close you can see that there is actually a vault inside the vault. The metal for the massive main door came from the Carnegie Steel Company.

The Cleveland Trust Company was established in 1894. In 1903 Cleveland Trust merged with the Western Reserve Trust Co. and in 1908
it built a new headquarters bldg. at E. 9th and Euclid. This building is still there today but it is now called the Ameritrust Building. By 1977 The Cleveland Trust Company had 120 branches, $5 billion in assets and it managed $7 billion in trust funds for its clients. CleveTrust changed its name to the AmeriTrust Corp. in 1979 and became part of Society Bank in 1991. Three years later Society merged with KeyCorp making it the nation’s 11th largest bank.

For more information about the Cleveland Trust Company please visit:

http://ech.cwru.edu/ech-cgi/article.pl?id=A8

Quote of the Day:

“And I sincerely believe, with you, that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity in the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale” – Thomas Jefferson