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Staying on Course. Today, banking has become more adventurous than ever. Like Morgan Guaranty, most large New York banks always specialized in wholesale banking. Their deposits came mainly from corporations, their big customers. But the great growth of the U.S. economy and middle-class wealth brought fresh funds pouring into regional banks all over the U.S. Corporations that once preferred to bank in New York in the days of centralization now often prefer to bank around the country in the day of decentralization. New York is still the nation's financial center, but its crown is slipping. The New York commercial banks' share of commercial bank deposits in the U.S. dropped from 24.8% in 1942 to 14.8% in 1958.
To protect themselves against the shift, such New York commercial banks as First National City Bank, Chase Manhattan and Manufacturers Trust have joined in wooing the consumer, offering hundreds of retail services. Bankers Trust once insisted on a minimum account of $5,000, now has dropped the rule. Standing almost alone against this trend, Morgan Guaranty has preferred to get the capital it needed by merging with Guaranty Trust Co., whose conservative policies stored up a large stock of capital.
Southpaw Checks. While Morgan Guaranty contentedly sticks to its course, the plain U.S. citizen all over the U.S. is being loved, flattered, pampered and wooed by the nation's banks. New ones are being built in strikingly modernistic designs to dazzle his eyes. Seattle First National Bank's new branch at Bellevue looks like a glass and steel cage. Other banks offer soft lights, pastel shades, upholstered chairs, low counters for children, even piped music to save by. The trend has reached such a point that the Colorado National Bank, housed in a traditional building, advertises itself in self-defense as "the bank that looks like a bank."
Banks have pursued the potential customer to the suburbs in a tremendous explosion of branch banking; there are now more than 9,000 branch offices in the U.S. Drive-in banks are common; there are also banks in airports, subways, train stations—even sail-in banks for yachtsmen. The banks that are concentrating on family banking offer a bewildering array of services: credit cards, savings plans for vacations, honeymoons, college. Banks now sell airline tickets, provide TV sets in the lobby at World Series time, handle auto-license renewals, lend umbrellas on rainy days, even print up "southpaw" checkbooks for lefthanded depositors.