54-58 Bowery
HSBC Bank (Formerly Citizens Savings Bank and Manhattan Savings Bank)
Architect: Clarence W. Brazer
Built in 1922-1924
2024
54-58 Bowery
Citizen's Savings Bank
Architect: Clarence W. Brazer
Built in 1922-1924
1940s
Interview
WITH TONY MOY (FORMER BANK TELLER AT 54-58 BOWERY)
Interview conducted in August 2022.
+ Tell me about the bank’s history with the building and your own story with the building.
I started working there as a teller for three months in 1975. At that time, it was the Manhattan Savings Bank. Manhattan Savings Bank owned a second branch at 17 Chatham Square. It was a pagoda-like building in the 1970s. I went there to work for the Grand Opening – I spent a month there and then got transferred to the old World Trade Center.
+ Tell me what you remember about that building.
Each teller would have their own individual line of customers.
Now, if you go in, it’s been partitioned. In the old days, once you walked in the main entrance from the Bowery side, there was an old vault — two open doors and the tellers were in front of them, with the vault right behind the teller.
At that time, the bank had its own chef and made lunch for all employees. They served western food — pasta, pork chops. The Italian lady made good food!
Tony Moy (left) at the Moy Shee Family Association building on Bayard Street, where our interview was conducted, August 2022.
One day, my assistant manager asked me to help her to go down to the basement to do a transcript on an account using an NCR machine, which looks like a cash register machine. But when my manager asked me to look up the transactions for the last three years, I had to go downstairs. The bank would keep the withdrawal tickets for 30 years and the deposit tickets for 20 years. Each year, after tellers would finish up, one teller would get the withdrawal tickets in one pile and the deposit tickets in another pile. The box would be labeled. I had to look up the boxes from three years!! I spent almost a week looking up all of the transactions. It was dusty; not cool-looking at all.
Before Manhattan Savings Bank, it was Citizens’ Savings Bank.
At the time, when I worked there and looked up at the ceiling, I didn’t see anything.
After National Bank took over, they cleaned the ceiling and now you see the paintings (frescos) at the top of the building.
Most customers (90%) were Chinese people and the other 10% were Italians.
50 BOWERY - HISTORIC IMAGES
Photograph of Manhattan Savings Bank on Canal Street in Chinatown taken March 1976. Photograph by Emile Bocian. Courtesy of the Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA) Collection.
Irma and Paul Milstein Division of United States History, Local History and Genealogy, The New York Public Library. (1887 – 1964). 152-154 Canal Street – Bowery Retrieved from https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47e2-eec5-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99
Photograph of Manhattan Savings Bank on Canal Street in Chinatown taken March 1976. Photograph by Emile Bocian. Courtesy of the Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA) Collection.
Irma and Paul Milstein Division of United States History, Local History and Genealogy, The New York Public Library. (1887 – 1964). 152-154 Canal Street – Bowery Retrieved from https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47e2-eec6-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99
50 BOWERY - BUILDING PHOTOGRAPHS
Photographs taken between 2022 – 2024.