On Friday, Nov. 9, the bank will close the branch at 75 Main St. as well as its drive-through outpost at 151 Church St. The bank made the announcement in a letter mailed to its customers and in a sign on the front door of its Main Street location.

It’s not part of a wave of closures; it’s just this branch, according to Matthew Pitts, the bank’s communications manager for western and central New York.

“This is purely a business decision, and it is based on customer traffic,” Pitts said Tuesday, Aug. 14. He was not able to provide figures on the customer shortage in Saranac Lake or any further description of the trend.

Key Bank owns both of its Saranac Lake properties and will soon decide what to do with them, Pitts said.

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Accounts going to Plattsburgh

The bank is consolidating the Saranac Lake branch with one on the west side of Plattsburgh, at 380 state Route 3 – one of three Key Bank branches in that city. Saranac Lake branch customers’ accounts will be transferred to the Plattsburgh West branch unless they decide to take their banking elsewhere.

“Even with all of our modern banking technology, I do like having a local branch,” Key Bank customer Chris Morris of Saranac Lake said Aug. 14, “so I’ll probably be looking to switch over to another bank that has a location here in town.”

Other than Plattsburgh, Key Bank’s next closest branches are in Malone and Potsdam. It also has branches all over New York and in 15 other states.

Saranac Lake’s other banks include Adirondack Bank, Champlain National Bank, Community Bank N.A., NBT Bank and Tri-Lakes Federal Credit Union, and there are other lending and financial businesses.

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Hidden facade?

One curious feature of the bank’s Main Street building is its flat brick front wall, with a door on the side. It’s the only building in the heart of downtown with that kind of featureless mid-20th-century front.

Its plainness stands out in a downtown filled with older and more ornate storefronts – yet this building had arguably downtown’s fanciest facade before its look was heavily changed in 1962.

Adirondack National Bank, as it was called then, was built in 1906 and 1907. On the front of the gray stone building, in between what looked like towers, was a two-story-high, arching glass window and front door. Inside, tellers helped customers in a vast room lit by windows and a skylight.

Northern New York Trust Company bought Adirondack National Bank in the 1950s, and then Marine Midland bought it in 1962. That year Marine Midland completely remodeled the building, inside and out, making what remains today.

Local historian Phil Gallos called the old Adirondack National Bank “the most beautiful commercial facade in the Adirondacks” and the current one “a hole in the smile of Main Street, a reminder of what can happen when a community forgets to guard its treasures, and a sad monument to the far reaching and unreachable powers of the faceless corporations that have attained such dominance in late 20th century American life.”

The bank’s interior was irrevocably changed, but many locals wonder whether the old facade still remains hidden behind that brick wall, possibly restorable.

“The best answer I can give you is we really don’t know what’s behind there,” Pitts said.

One person who obsesses over the question is Tim Fortune, a local artist and Downtown Advisory Board member who has stared at that facade for 23 years through the picture window of his painting studio across Main Street. He said he and Amy Catania, director of Historic Saranac Lake, worked with Munoz to see if Key Bank would investigate what is behind the wall.

“Amy actually secured an architect who said he’d be willing to make a probe of some sort, I think from the inside,” Fortune said. He said it would have cost about $1,200, and the Adirondack North Country Association agreed to pay half.

“Obviously it was something that was not going to happen overnight,” Munoz said, but he said he tried to set up meetings between bank leaders and local advocates.

“We do believe that beautiful arch is there,” Fortune said.

Fortune said he was disappointed to hear Key Bank is leaving town.

“We’re kind of back to square one now,” he said. “We’re physically changing the look of downtown, and this facade is the worst visual structure in Saranac Lake. It just sticks out like a sore thumb. Hopefully the new owners will see that and be willing to do something with the facade.”