Groundspeak Portal

I was wondering if anyone has thought of Banks as a category?

Bof A, Wells Fargo, Chase, Citi, US Bank, Regional/Local?

It could go under business/commerce - so many are in very intresting buildings.

I have no interest in this type of category.  Yes there are some interesting buildings but there are so many very boring buildings also.

Usually if a building is interesting enough there will be a category for it. Dated cornerstone, National Register of Historic Places, Frieze Art,  and I'm sure there's a few more I'm missing. I know what your saying about some of these bank's being pretty cool. Some are down right amazing but there's a lot more drab banks around here then that 1 amazing bank in every tri-county area. Swizzle

I protest on the principle that I bite my tongue every time I see a commercial chain category, but I'll tell you this, if you can make it clear what we're waymarking and describe it in a way that makes me understand what is interesting and unique about these sites, I'll vote for it. I'd recommend establishing a special criteria. At least 100 years old? That'll happily throw out BOA with their branches on every corner. Do they have to be in service as banks or will former banks (of historical significance) be allowed? How do we post banks that have changed names several times over the years... as the first name or the current name? How do you want the long description written? What are you thinking about for variables?

Tell me more. :)

I like the 100 year old criteria. That would knock a ton of banks out in one big ol' swat. I think the current name should be used in the title simply because of waymarkers seeing the title and then the bank they know that they found it right away. In the long description all of the names of the bank over the years should be listed as well as any history link. Your still gonna get some crappy banks that are fallen down and decrepit but you would see a lot of better quality architecture. You may also want to put an a stipulation that would allow newer banks that are in the NRHP to be added as well. How about banks that have been robbed? I think that would be cool. Swizzle

swizzle:

How about banks that have been robbed?

thats just a news story....

Dang I never thought about that. A bank less then a half mile of my old place was robbed a couple years ago. I should try to dig it up and see if I can get it submitted. Thanx for pointing that out. Swizzle

Try this resource.

Google your home town.

Tribes Hill New York

At the top of the page select News

Click the Advanced news search link next to the search box.

Next find the link that says

^New! Try archive search for articles added more than 30 days ago

Look at the date timeline  at the top. If you  select a year it breaks it down into articles by month if you select a month it returns all results for a given month in that particular year.

If you select the Advanced search for this page it also gives you the option to determine the price of items returned. If you select the no price option in the drop down box it will only return results that are free to view. So it filters out what you can't see anyhow and comes up with  You can also select date ranges etc. Once here you can play around with the search title and find interesting results.

Here is the filter Tribes Hill results and since it is two words it still turns up a bunch of fluff but if you look a bit you find stuff like this.

Or this Look for the article for Amsterdam NY where a work gang of men were killed.

The Amsterdam search yields a lot more easy to find results.

So say I find an article that I want to read but don't want to fork over that kinda dough. Would it be feasible to write down the name of the paper and all of the dates that I want to look up. Go to my local library and look up all of those dates and print them out for a quarter each. Then come home, scan them and put them into my waymarks? Sounds like it'd work to me. Swizzle

im glad i dont have to go through that, ive got a great free online paper--St Pete Times.

i dont see why that wouldnt work. ive come across some OLD google news articles recently too....

suefitz:

I was wondering if anyone has thought of Banks as a category?

Bof A, Wells Fargo, Chase, Citi, US Bank, Regional/Local?

It could go under business/commerce - so many are in very intresting buildings.

Sure, I've thought about banks as a category a lot - and passed it by pretty quickly.  Now and then I see an interesting bank, but most of them are so mundane and ubiquitous as to hardly merit a general category.

The only thing I think possibly might have merit would be old banks, as has been suggested.  For North America, a hundred years seems appropriate.  For Europe, I don't know.  Even at that, many banks are waymarked in other categories - NRHP, and architectural categories mostly. 

Another angle would be banks converted to other uses (similar to the converted firehouse cat or former schools cat). 

But, please, not a giant omnibus category for any and all banks everywhere in the world!

I think former banks would be cool, not too ubiquitous, and more interesting than just plain old banks.

How about 100 year old banks with stone pillars. That'd make it a little more interesting and maybe knock out wooden buildings and plain brick. Swizzle

swizzle:

How about 100 year old banks with stone pillars. That'd make it a little more interesting and maybe knock out wooden buildings and plain brick. Swizzle

Over 100 years old should suffice. The columns are more of an architectural item. I'd rather not see new categories created based on aesthetic qualities where not warranted. Otherwise we'll get...

McDonald's with Drive Throughs
Libraries with External Book Returns
Blue Lighthouses
Museums with Donation Boxes

BQ

My idea was to find something that would knock out more Plain Jane's. I know there's a ton of nice buildings out there without pillars so I guess it was a poor example. I really like the idea of Museums with Donation Boxes. I'll write that up and what about McDonalds with playlands? Not all of them have playlands you know! lol Swizzle

swizzle:

So say I find an article that I want to read but don't want to fork over that kinda dough. Would it be feasible to write down the name of the paper and all of the dates that I want to look up. Go to my local library and look up all of those dates and print them out for a quarter each. Then come home, scan them and put them into my waymarks? Sounds like it'd work to me. Swizzle

I did that for this waymark. Wild West Show Parade, August 29th 1902, Eugene Oregon

Worked perfectly.

That said there are a lot of papers that are completely free using the method above.

The banks I admired lately were the ones that at first glance looked like "Carnegie Libraries" as they had interesting architecture, columns, facades, scrolls and some with gargoyles, you know,  the ones that still  had class...
- If you are even thinking of setting up this Category consider "old fashioned banks"  no glass cages or sky scrapers, or any of those ram shackle ones that you wouldn't even trust with your jar of pennies..  

Wow it looks like you took a lot of time and research to set that one up. That looks quite professional. I like it. Swizzle