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Former Footville bank building marks 100 years

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Photo by Dan Lassiter

Ron Hill does texturing work outside a window at the former Footville State Bank, now the Footville Historical Society.

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Photo by Dan Lassiter

Bill Zwerfel finishes off a lentil above a window at the Footville State Bank building in Footville.

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Katherine A. Demrow

FOOTVILLE — The robber picked a Wednesday to enter The Footville State Bank.

With a pistol in his hand, he walked into 158 Depot St. on Sept. 29, 1965, and demanded money.

“Are you serious?” bank President Bill Canary asked.

“Deadly serious,” the robber replied.

A bank employee filled the robber’s bag with cash, and he took off.

But the bank always had ensured that depositors received 100 percent of their money—even through the Great Depression, recalls Canary’s daughter, Mary Putsch, 72.

“He wasn’t about to let anyone think that they could lose money in his bank,” she said.

So off went Putsch’s brother Paul, who hopped into his car to chase the robber while Bill jumped into a passing car. The chase sped through Hanover and into Illinois until the robber ran out of gas west of Rockton, Ill.

“My dad is screaming out the window, ‘Bank robber!'” Putsch recalled with a laugh.

The robber was arrested after fleeing into a cornfield, and the money he stole—a little more than $2,000—was recovered.

National radio commentator Paul Harvey picked up the story.

“It put Footville on the map,” Putsch said. “That was the only out-of-the-ordinary, exciting day in the history of this bank.”

While the banking days in the building are decades gone by, the history remains to be celebrated. The Luther Valley Historical Society, which now calls the former bank its home, will celebrate the building’s 100 years with an event Saturday, May 15.

A donation from the Blackhawk Questers, an antique study group, sparked a restoration effort to return the bank’s appearance to its original look, said Kay Demrow, 84, the historical society’s archivist, treasurer and newsletter editor.

The bank consisted of two teller windows, the vault and the president’s office. The restoration has brought back the woodwork and metal bars that created the secure window between tellers and customers.

The original wooden bench that greeted customers inside the door has returned. The container that held “Lollipops for good little boys and girls” also found its way back to the teller windows.

The original vault remains, complete with the aging annual lock inspection forms taped in the doorframe.

Faded white letters read “Burglar alarm” on the red box that remains outside above the door. The alarm was tied to the vault, but the only times Putsch recalled the alarm sounding was when severe weather set it off.

“I just can’t believe it,” Putsch said of the restoration. “It’s just amazing to see it the way it looked all those years growing up.”

She had spent many days at the bank where her mother also worked as a secretary, bookkeeper and eventually vice president.

The bank was built in 1909 and opened Jan. 3, 1910. The village population at the time was 300. Now with a population of more than 700, Footville no longer has a bank.

The bank was sold in 1972 and moved a few years later to a new location at Highway 11 and Century Lane under the name of Mid America Bank. The Janesville-based Mid America bank closed that Footville branch in February, and the building is for sale.

The historical society has met regularly in the 100-year-old bank building since it closed. The society’s membership has grown from about five people to more than 200, Demrow said.

People now joke that the society should empty its historical artifacts and reopen the bank, since it’s the first time in 100 years the village is without a bank, she said.

“The bank itself is history, and now we’re saving history,” she said.