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As businesses that started in Lancaster County well over a century ago survived and adapted after the Great Depression, it is probably not surprising that survivors would become some of the largest in Nebraska. What is surprising is to look behind the curtain and see a community that trusted its money to a man who seemingly just kept their “deposits” for them without any sort of security, morphing into one of the largest banks in Nebraska. As the village of College View came into being around Union College, one of the first employees to arrive was Joe Sutherland, the school’s first business manager, later the president of the city council and the city treasurer.
As there were no actual banks in the community, residents trusted their funds to Sutherland at the college who simply took their “deposits” home with him every night for safekeeping, probably not much better than stashing them under a mattress. People are also reading..
. As amounts grew, he began transferring the monies to actual banks in Lincoln and Chicago where he could earn 2% interest. Zolman Nicola moved from Iowa to College View as the college formed, becoming the village’s first postmaster.
After first buying the northwest corner of 47th and Bancroft, he traded it for the southwest corner of 48th and Prescott. When the village incorporated and that intersection became the merging point of its four precincts, he correctly predicted it would become the center of the business district. In 1901 he built a store on the corner which burned in 1903.
He, however, rebuild there as the extant, two-story, brick building. James Schee, of Iowa, built a narrow, two-story, brick building on the north side of Prescott, just east of the alley for his Bank of College View in 1906, leasing the second floor for offices. In February of 1917 Farmer’s State Bank was established in Nicola’s building at 48th and Prescott, giving the village two banks.
In 1929 College View was annexed to Lincoln, and, by year’s end, both banks had succumbed to the Great Depression. All was, however, not lost as W. E.
Barkley, head of Union Life Insurance Company in Lincoln, reorganized Farmer’s State Bank with capital of $25,000 and gave former depositors “15% on their old deposits.” That June, Barkley borrowed his insurance company’s name and renamed Farmer’s State as Union Bank. Interestingly the same year, Barkley’s Lincoln Bank & Trust Co.
at 12th and O streets was robbed of $2,702,796, the largest cash bank robbery in the world. Fortunately, however, he was able to negotiate with the Capone gang for the return of $575,000 in negotiable bonds. Union Bank moved from 48th and Prescott into a new, purpose-built, building at 48th and Bancroft with its old building purchased by the Nebraska Conference of Seventh Day Adventists in 1955.
When trust services were added, he altered the bank’s name to Union Bank & Trust Co. Two years later the Bancroft Street facility added a “new, one-story, drive-in service building.” In 1921 Maynard Dunlap purchased the bank in Douglas, Nebraska, followed by the Bank of Palmyra and the Lancaster County Bank.
Joined by sons George and Jay, the Dunlap family acquired controlling interest in Union Bank in 1964-65, which then had around 20 employees. At that point Maynard had been involved in Nebraska banking for 50 years. As their interest grew, it was noted that, by 1976, George Dunlap was an officer/director in eight Nebraska banks.
“The former First National Bank Lincoln was merged into Union Bank” in 1998 and an ad noted their holding had then risen to $1.6 billion in bank assets. By 2018 Union Bank was the fourth largest bank headquartered in Nebraska.
Two years later Union Bank, then with 900 employees was No. 202 of the largest banks in the U.S.
and, with Jay Dunlap’s daughter, Angie Muhleisen, as CEO, had become, along with holding several other records, the largest student loan and Small Business Administration lenders in the U.S. While Union Bank has taken over several buildings, including the old College View post office, College View retains several of the two banks’ remnants.
The southwest corner of 48th and Prescott is now an Adventist bookstore with the old vault used by the insurance company which occupies the ground floor while the Bank of College View’s building on the north side of Prescott is now the western portion of the Mill Coffee Shop. Historian Jim McKee, who still writes with a fountain pen, invites comments or questions. Write to him in care of the Journal Star or at jim@leebooksellers.
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