What's the Deal with Apple Bank?

New York City is chock full of financial institutions, including many, many banks. There are numerous small banks, mostly clustered in various neighborhoods, but the big ones are JP Morgan Chase and Capital One and TDBank that have branches all over the city and country.

The bank that has always intrigued me, however, although not enough to become a customer, is Apple Bank. I don't know anyone who has ever had an account there, who's ever used it, and there don't seem to be very many branches for it around the city. But it's been in business for over almost 150 years and is a stalwart of the NYC financial community. 

Apple Bank is most notable for two things in my mind. First, it appears to sponsor a large number of events around town -- including the St. John's basketball team (I recently went to a game and saw its logo all over the place). Second, Apple Bank has probably the most impressive headquarters of any financial institution in NYC -- the large, fortress-like building on West 72nd street and Broadway, looming like a stern parent over Verdi Square (known back in the day as "needle park"). It's a formidable structure, military-like, and in a residential neighborhood with many impressive buildings (like the Dakota and the Ansonia), the Apple Bank building is an odd anomaly, a strange and permanent interloper of an edifice.  

The Apple Bank building is not only a financial headquarters -- it's also an apartment building with super-expensive residences therein. If you want to check it out, and can swing $12,500 a month in rent, you might find your next home in this iconic if underappreciated NYC building.

P.S. Apple Bank has nothing to do, it should be obvious, with Apple the computer hardware giant -- obviously Apple Bank is derivative of "the Big Apple." Also, the had a different name for a long time before it became Apple Bank -- it started as Harlem Savings Bank in 1863. In the 1980s Apple Bank even ran TV commercials (see below) but, apparently, no longer.