Filter Results Date - Creator Associated Photographers, Inc. Subject Mellon Bank. Andrew William , Mobile 24 Hour Teller van. Mellon Bank Records. Braddock National Bank. Farmers Deposit Savings Bank employees with Prince. Andrew W. Exterior of Farmers Bank building after explosion.
Gateway Center Office display. Children on a rollercoaster at Conneaut Lake Park. Interior of City Deposit Bank. Construction of Oil City National Bank. Farmers Deposit National Bank bombing. Mellon Bank, Smithfield Street building. Construction of Mellon Bank, University Office. Children at a Mellon Bank employee family picnic. The company boasts a particularly successful track record in bonds, data-processing innovation, and personal trust management.
Approximately small banks depend on Mellon to fulfill their data-processing needs, while the personal-trust department is one of the largest in the United States.
Mellon survived more than its share of corporate crises in the s, but renewed emphasis on such services as trust management, investment, data processing, and cash management have helped bring the corporation back to the successful regional status it enjoyed under Thomas Mellon in its first few decades.
Born on a potato farm in Ireland in , Thomas Mellon decided at an early age that farming was not his life's calling. When he was five years old, his family moved to Pennsylvania, where he could often be found reading a book as he rode a plow across his father's fields.
He became a lawyer in , and although his practice did well, his investments in real estate, construction, and mortgages fared even better. In Judge Thomas Mellon retired from public service and founded T. Mellon and Sons, a private banking house at Smithfield Street in Pittsburgh. The bank prospered during the postwar years, and a second bank, run by Mellon's sons, opened soon after the first.
In the Panic of , when half the banks in Pittsburgh failed, the Mellons never closed either bank. Although Thomas Mellon died in , his sons, Andrew and Richard, were able to build upon their father's foundation to create the giant that would eventually play a key role in fueling industry throughout Pennsylvania and must of the rest of the country.
Gulf Oil grew to become the world's tenth-largest industrial corporation, and Alcoa became the world's largest aluminum manufacturer. The Mellons' monumental success with Mellon Bank and other such ventures is partly responsible for the long-held belief in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania that "nothing moves in Pittsburgh without the Mellons.
Four financial institutions founded in the 19th century have contributed to the growth and history of Mellon Bank.
Besides T. After serving as president of T. Mellon and Sons from to , Thomas Mellon retired and turned the bank over to his son Andrew. Under Andrew's leadership, the bank financed the creation of Union Transfer and Trust Company; joined the national banking system as Mellon National Bank in ; formed its first foreign bureau, in , to provide banking services for customer activity outside the United States; and established a long tradition of growth through acquisitions and mergers.
In the late 19th century, goods were often sold with a three- or four-month grace period between delivery and payment due dates. Mellon and Sons profited from the common practice of buying at a discount the documents that showed the amount due and holding them until maturity to collect the full value. This business made T. Mellon and Sons the largest private bank between New York and Chicago. The bank soon decided to expand its range of operations, however, to include trust estates and related work, and created the Fidelity Title and Trust Company with the help of other investors.
Fidelity was an instant success--so much so that it found itself turning away business in order to avoid conflicts of interest between clients. Consequently, in it set up its own rival company, the Union Transfer and Trust Company, which became the Union Trust Company not long after. In an effort to consolidate the Mellons' banking interests, the family decided in that Mellon National Bank should become an almost wholly owned subsidiary of Union Trust. While he served in Washington, D. Since Mellon National Bank was a federally chartered corporation and Union Trust and Union Savings were state banks, the Mellons were able to take advantage of both banking systems.
Together, the banks could finance virtually any enterprise in the country by the s. In , Richard Mellon formed Mellbank Security Company, a bank holding company that helped save numerous smaller banks in western Pennsylvania during the Great Depression. Mellon's knack for giving sound advice to its customers, together with its ability to maintain sufficient liquidity and one of the highest ratios of cash to deposits in the nation, played a major role in the bank's survival through the s.
Indeed, since the Mellon name and conservative reputation were well known by the s, many of the panicked customers who withdrew their savings from other banks after the crash flocked to Mellon National. Seeing the crowds team into the bank, Richard Mellon reportedly muttered "I told those damn architects to make more room in the lobby. After Richard's death in , his son, Richard K. Mellon, took over as president.
Mellon Bank also entered the retail market by expanding its branch network and merging with Mellbank. By the middle of the 20th century, Mellon began to build a reputation for technological innovation, especially in cash management. The company bought its first computer in , one of the first banks in the nation to do so. In Mellon established the Mellbank Regional Clearing House, the forerunner of its Datacenter Group, for overnight processing of checks from correspondent banks.
One measure of Mellon's power was the size of its trust assets: in , Mellon Bank controlled a third of all the trust assets in Pennsylvania. That same year "outsiders"--people who were not Mellon descendants--first filled the bank's top two positions. Richard K. Mellon became honorary chairman of the board, John A.
Mayer, president since , became chairman, and A. Bruce Bowden was appointed president. As president, Mayer had helped Mellon double its savings deposits, nearly double its mortgages holdings, and issue credit cards to , people.
His success was the fruition of a program begun by Richard K. Mellon to expand Mellon's reach from its traditional base of wealthy individuals to all kinds of banking customers. By the mids, Mellon was still one of the most conservative banks in the country, a philosophy that served it well in , when many progressive banks got into trouble with real estate investment trusts, a popular investment item in the s and s.
Banks had lent billions of dollars for real estate and construction ventures.
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