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“The question of a savings bank is one of vital importance to a city of the dimensions of Cedar Rapids,” The Gazette stated in March 1883, when a new bank, Cedar Rapids Savings Bank, was organized in the city.

Nine prominent men started the bank with the combined capital of $50,000: Lawson Daniels, Charles B. Soutter, John T. Hamilton, James L. Bever, Robert Palmer, Frank C. Hormel, George W. Bever, Arthur T. Averill and Frank J. Upton. The bank’s stockholders elected all of them.

The directors, in turn, elected Hamilton as president; Soutter as first vice president; and Daniels as second vice president.

The new bank moved into the small space that had housed the former City National Bank on

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