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The bank provided financial
services for New York City's rising Irish Catholic immigrant population.
The bank provided easy transfer of funds between New York and Emigrant's
branch offices in Dublin.
The building is now used by the New York
City.

This office building, formerly
known as the Emigrant Industrial Savings Bank Building, is located on the
north side of Chambers Street nearly midway between Broadway and Elk
Street, and extends back to Reade Street. It contains various city
government offices.
The Emigrant Bank was organized in 1850, under the auspices of Roman
Catholic bishop John Hughes and the Irish Emigrant Society, to protect the
savings of newly arrived Irish immigrants. In 1908 the bank commissioned
designs for a new building that would front both Chambers and Reade
Streets. This limestone-faced skyscraper in the Beaux-Arts style was the
first to be laid out on an H-plan, providing light and air to almost all
office
spaces. The richly decorated banking hall has marble walls and floors,
bronze grilles, original tellers' cages, and a series of stained-glass
skylights with allegorical figures representing mining, manufacturing,
agriculture, and other modes of employment. [The Guide to New York City
Landmarks]

The City purchased the
building in 1965. It intended to use the site for a new Municipal
Building, which had been designed in the early 1960's but was never built.
The
Emigrant Industrial Savings Bank Building is a designated New York City
Landmark.
Special
thanks to www.nyc.gov |