1973 was a year of inflation — even before President Ford’s famous “Whip Inflation Now” pins (they didn’t work), the prices of meat, gasoline and other staples of life were growing at an incredible pace. Schenectady Savings Bank, where passbook savings accounts ran at about 5% in the previous years, was here advertising savings certificates (CDs) at as much as 7.9%. Of course, if you could earn that much on savings, it meant that borrowing money cost many points more. A quick survey of certificates of deposit today, at a time when a mortgage might run at 3.5%, shows rates just barely north of 1%. So, upside, downside.
For many years ads for Schenectady Savings Bank featured a cut of their main building and the slogan, “Where Clinton Crosses State.” The bank was chartered in 1834, and was taken over by Northeast Savings sometime in the mid-1980s. Then it was decided that being a savings bank wasn’t cool, and the bank changed format and was acquired by another bank, which was acquired by another bank, and so essentially the institution we knew as Schenectady Savings is long gone. Its main branch had a clean, classy look inside, not as grand as some of the other old banks but stately and assured. It is now a Bank of America branch that looks like every other branch, though perhaps a bit more run down.
