The Union Bank Museum, a historical landmark in Tallahassee, will reopen its doors to the public Saturday after being closed since 2020 because of the pandemic, then a restoration.
Built in 1841, the Union Bank is considered Florida’s oldest surviving bank building. The building opened as a “planter’s bank” during the antebellum period before becoming home to the National Freedman’s Savings and Trust Company following Emancipation.
But it didn’t always serve as a bank.
Over the next century, the building’s main chamber-sized room beneath a vaulted ceiling sheltered a church, a beauty parlor, a lock-and-safe service, city offices, a dance academy and a dental lab.
It was even where Gramling’s Feed Store started before the business moved to its Adams Street location.
In 1971 the bank was moved from Adams Street to its current location on Apalachee Parkway, a block down from the Florida Capitol complex.
The Union Bank was added to the National Register of Historic Places and later opened as a museum in 1984.