North Main Extension
Old Farmers National Bank
1903 · 28 North Main Street
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On October 11, 1932, four young men walked into this bank, tied up two employees and two customers, and escaped with $8,370.
That was roughly $200,000 in 2026 purchasing power.
How that figure is calculated
Bureau of Labor Statistics all-items CPI-U: the 1932 annual average is 13.7 and the August 2026 unadjusted index is 334.980. $8,370 × 334.980 / 13.7 is about $204,655.66, rounded here to roughly $200,000. This compares consumer purchasing power between those fixed dates. It is not a wage comparison, and it says nothing about the bank's total funds. Sources: the historical CPI table in this BLS Economics Daily article (All items column, 1932 row; verified 2026-09-28) and the BLS CPI news release, Table 1 (August 2026, All items, unadjusted).
The robbers put the four of them facedown on the floor and worked fast. Across the street, a garage owner saw what was happening. He and another man chased the robbers out of town, but lost them.
It was the farmers' own bank in the plainest sense. Its stockholders held their organizing meeting on March 21, 1903 in Old Town Hall, the building where this tour begins. That same year, in the flush of the produce boom, they put up this stone landmark on ground newly cut from the old mill property.
About the building
A Flemish gable, a corner tower on a squat column, arched windows under an embossed metal cornice: the historic district survey reads the design as Romanesque Revival "showing the influence of Philadelphia architect Frank Furness" and calls it highly original.
The Depression that framed the robbery never broke the bank itself. Banks failed by the thousands in those years, and in March 1933 Washington ordered every bank in the country closed in the national bank holiday. The farmers' bank came through all of it whole, never failed and never in receivership, and twenty years on it was still greeting customers under the slogan it had earned: The Friendly Bank.
The bank outgrew the building in 1963 and moved up Main Street, and the township government moved in. For over a decade Harrison Township was run from a bank, complete with a celebration out front in 1972 when the town dedicated its new police car. By the mid-1970s the township needed more room too, and government moved on to Bridgeton Pike.
