Glasgow merchants John and Robert Lewis opened a bank in a corner of their general store in 1891, when it was the only bank within over two hundred miles. Despite their initial lack of experience, they guided it through the panics of 1893 and 1907 and the agricultural depression of the 1920s that doomed many other Montana banks. During Glasgow’s boom years, the bank prospered, moving to a brick building in 1900 and then, during the homesteading boom, into a Beaux Arts business block completed in 1914. Like many national banks barred from investing in real estate other than their own buildings, it included surplus office space. Designed by Saint Paul architects Charles Buechner and Henry Orth, the two-story building housed retail stores and the bank on the first floor and business offices and an apartment for Robert Lewis on the second floor. Built on the community’s busiest street for security and customer convenience, it helped mark Glasgow’s coming of age, and its symmetrical façade, Corinthian columns, balconies, pilasters, and terra-cotta ornament expressed solidity, stability, grandeur, safety, and permanence for both the bank and the community.