This is quickly becoming a cashless society.
Checks too are going the way of the landline and printed newspaper. (And soon, the penny.)
It’s so easy to just tap (or click), and pay.
Bills are grubby. Checks are messy.
But that was not always the case. Look at this handsome relic, from 1853:
(Courtesy of Axl Aparicio)
There’s some great detail here. The paper was sturdy.
And $2 — well, that was real money back then.
Meanwhile, about that Saugatuck Bank: In 1852, Horace Staples — owner of a lumber and hardware business, silk and axe factories, shipping vessels and a thriving pier — founded it.
Two years later he moved it to National Hall — his new building a couple of miles upriver, just across the bridge from a small downtown area overshadowed by the far more dynamic Saugatuck section of Westport.
Eventually, Saugatuck Bank became Westport Bank & Trust (“A hometown bank, in a town of homes”).
It outgrew National Hall — which turned into Fairfield Furniture — and relocated to a pie-slice-shaped building nearby, where Church Lane feeds into the Post Road.
Most recently, that was Patagonia. Soon, it becomes an office for Compass, the real estate firm.
Which sells homes for a lot more than $2.
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