Every Time I Look For You | Greenwich Savings Bank / Haier Building
Alright @YouTheReader,
This song is in American Pie 2 and after doing a Critiquing of Critics on it Thursday, I figured it would be a good spot for Week to Week Notes to listen to a blink-182 song. Blink-182 is originally from Poway, California and they started in 1992. Their guitarist, Tom DeLonge, was expelled from Poway High School for being drunk at a basketball game and was forced to attend a different school, Rancho Bernardo High School. There, he met his future band member, Scott Raynor, the band’s drummer at a Battle of the Bands competition. DeLonge also met Mark Hoppus, the bassist, because Hoppus was dating a mutual friend’s sister. Pretty random. (Source: LA Times)
From 1992 to 1998, the band was relatively unknown. At one point they were named Duck Tape before deciding they liked “Blink.” They started booking shows at local YMCAs and Elks Clubs on the weekends. The first record company to work with blink-182 was Cargo Records. They signed blink-182 on a “we’ll see how this goes trial basis.” Cargo Records forced the then Blink to change its name because there was already an Irish electronica artist with the same title. The band picked 182 because that is how many times Al Pacino says “f***” in the movie Scarface. Pretty random. (Source: Dying Scene)
1999 was blink-182’s breakthrough year. They released their album, Enema of the State, in June of that year. Most of @YouTheReaders will know the album because it had some excellent songs like “What’s My Age Again?”, “All The Small Things”, “Adam’s Song”, and “Mutt.” This song, “Every Time I Look For You”, is on their 4th studio album, Take Off Your Pants and Jacket, which features other songs of theirs such as “Anthem Part Two”, “The Rock Show”, and “First Date.” On their 5th studio album, they have “I Miss You”, I’m sure another song most of @YouTheReaders know as well. My personal favorite blink-182 song is “Feeling This” because it was in Madden ‘04. Obviously to each their own, I feel like most people my age went through a blink-182 phase at one point or another because they made some excellent punk rock music for the radio.
Another reason I went with this song was it has Stumble in it and this is a Stumblin’ Along so it fits the theme. “Every Time I Look For You” is a fast-paced song about fleeting young love but as Mark Hoppus put it, “I honestly have no idea what this one is about.” (Source: blink TOYPAJ Tour Program) So rather than dive too much deeper into the lyrics on this one, how about we save some teenage angst (that is a joke) for another blink-182 song for a later date and I show you something kind of cool?
Yesterday I tagged the starting lineups and Smashmouth because “All Star” was the thematic concept blah blah blah. The Atlanta Braves and NL All Star Team starting right fielder & shortstop gave the story a view. Again, who knows if they clicked the link or if it is their social media PR teams running the account but pretty cool that Ronald Acuna Jr. and Orlando Arcia can be added to the list.
Smashmouth also gave the story a view. If somehow you were to tell 5-year-old me that I would be running an Instagram account tagging the guys who sang “All Star” and that they would give it a view - my reaction would probably be, “wow, cool, is Instagram a Pokemon and can we go to Toys ‘R Us now?” Anyway, here are the receipts in case anybody cares.
Everything written below here is a pure Stumblin’ Along about the Greenwich Savings Bank / Haier Building and is about history, so if that ain’t your cup of tea - have a great rest of your Sunday and come back for a Drake Mock Draft Monday tomorrow.
Greenwich Savings Bank / Haier Building
I took this picture of the Haier Building on January 13, ‘23. I was 13 days into #GuinnessChallengeSeason and was honestly kind of making it up as I was going Stumblin’ Along that night. I remember seeing the building, thinking this must be important, and getting seduced by the Corinthian columns. Naturally, as one does, I captured a moment so I could learn a bit about the building. The Haier Building as it is known today, was built in 1922 and originally was the home to the Greenwich Savings Bank, so we’ll start there.
The Greenwich Savings Bank was chartered in 1833 in New York City. They got the name because the bank was established in Greenwich Village. Greenwich Village got its name from the Dutch “Groenwijck”, which means “Green District” and when the Brits took over NY they must have been too lazy to come up with their own name but that is a different story for another day. A fella named Abraham H. Pattison was the first to make a deposit into Greenwich Savings Bank on July 1, 1833. He deposited $11.00 (equivalent to $398.26 today) in a trust for Edna M. Pattison. The bank was founded by Greenwich Village merchants for the welfare of their neighbors at a time when such an institution was sorely needed. (Source: Ninety Years of the Greenwich Savings Bank) The picture to the left above is the bank’s headquarters in 1892, it was located on Sixth Ave and 16th Street so I Google Mapped it today.
George Suckley was the first president of the Greenwich Savings Bank. He was an Englishman described in an existing agreement dated November 5, 1787, as “of Crane Court, Fleet Street, London, gentleman.” He came over to the States in 1792 to be a representative of Thomas Holy and William Newbould, button manufacturers of Sheffield. Suckley would become a US citizen in 1794. Greenwich Village in the early 1800s was considered outside of the City, so he ended up hanging out there because cholera was killing hundreds of people a day in the more bustling areas of the 1830s. In year 4 of the bank’s existence, it experienced its first bank panic because Congress was demanding people pay up for projects such as the Erie Canal from the decade prior. Not much else to Note about George Suckley other than he gave up the presidency in 1840 and passed away in 1842. (Source: Ninety Years of the Greenwich Savings Bank)
Greenwich Savings Bank was able to get through its 1800s panics and as the City population started moving more uptown so did the money. They built a beautiful building located on 1356 Broadway in Midtown Manhattan. The building took 2 years to construct, from 1922 to 1924. The steel-reinforced limestone and sandstone building was designed by bank architects Edward York and Philip Sawyer. York and Sawyer partnered together from 1898 to 1948 and designed the likes of the Pershing Square Building, and American Security and Trust Company Building in the City, and the Herbert C. Hoover Building in Washington DC. York and Sawyer decided to go with a Classical Revival style with monumental Corinthian columns on three sides of the building, rusticated walls, and a Roman-style dome. The bank opened it’s new headquarters on May 19, 1924, and the transfer of all its cash & securities took 26 trips “in armored cars and under the protection of machine guns.” (Source: New York Times)
Greenwich Savings Bank would operate in the building’s space until 1981. At the bank’s peak, it had branches in The City, Nassau County, and Westchester with $2.5 billion in assets. (Source: Kiddle) Greenwich Savings Bank started seeking massive losses in 1980 due to bank deregulations. The FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation) and NY State Banking Department wanted Greenwich Savings Bank to be bought out or partner with another bank but nothing came to fruition and in the banks’ finals days they lost $500 million in deposits out of its total of $1.5 billion due to a run on the bank. The building still remained a bank because Greenwich Savings accounts would be taken over by Metropolitan Savings Bank of Brooklyn and then Crossland Federal Savings Bank, but both of those didn’t last either.
The Chinese appliance company, Haier, bought The Greenwich Savings Bank Building in 2000 and renamed it after themselves as well as made it their American corporate headquarters. Now the Haier Building that used to be The Greenwich Savings Bank is a leased space to the venue now known as Gotham Hall. Gotham Hall features a 9,000-square-foot Ballroom with a 70-foot ceiling and an ornate stained-glass skylight. Corporations such as HBO and Sony now use the space for corporate events. Celebrities like Snoop Dogg to Sir Elton John have held parties at Gotham Hall. If you ever wanted to have a wedding reception at a location where Britney Spears performed, it can be used as that too. My guess is it ain’t cheap.
Not Every Time I Look For @YouTheReader do I know what I’ll find on Stubmlin’ Along, but I usually learn something. This is now the 2nd Stumblin’ Along about a bank, my bad I get seduced by the Corinthian columns.
YouTube Rabbithole
Britney Spears - Baby One More Time (at Gotham Hall)