The Canal Dime Savings Bank, located at 1530 Main Street in downtown Columbia, is one of the city’s most distinctive surviving nineteenth-century commercial buildings and an especially important example of Richardsonian Romanesque architecture in South Carolina. Constructed between approximately 1892 and 1895, the three-story building was commissioned for the Canal Dime Savings Bank, an institution organized in May 1892 by Edwin Wales Robertson and Gilbert M. Berry with an initial capital of $30,000. The bank’s capital was increased to $50,000 in 1895, when its name was shortened to the Canal Bank.

The building was designed by the Columbia architectural firm of W. B. Smith Whaley and Company, associated with architect, builder, and cotton industrialist W. B. Smith Whaley and his partner Gadsden E. Shand. Its design represents the firm’s embrace of the Richardsonian Romanesque mode then popular for substantial commercial and institutional buildings. The structure is a three-story brick building distinguished by a massive rough-cut granite façade, rounded Romanesque arches, an asymmetrical composition, and a strong sculptural quality. A red barrel-tile roof completes the building and adds a colorful contrast to the heavy stonework.

The upper façade remains the building’s greatest architectural asset. Rough-cut granite gives the second and third stories a substantial, almost fortress-like appearance, while rounded-arch windows and openings provide contrast and visual rhythm. The third floor includes a distinctive balcony or arcade treatment, while carved stone ornament contributes to the building’s picturesque character. The asymmetrical arrangement and deliberately rugged masonry are hallmarks of the Richardsonian Romanesque style, in which architectural mass, texture, and deeply recessed openings were used to convey strength and permanence. The South Carolina Department of Archives and History identifies the Canal Dime Savings Bank as Columbia’s only surviving example of the Richardsonian Romanesque style.

The building was also notable for incorporating the modern conveniences expected of a progressive commercial establishment in the 1890s. Contemporary descriptions emphasized such features as electric call bells, annunciators, fancy lamps, and combination gas-and-electric light fixtures. While the bank occupied the first floor, the upper stories became associated with the Cherokee Club, a private social organization whose rooms included a parlor, library, fireplaces, and a flexible space that could be opened into a dance hall. The third floor included billiard and pool tables, making the building an important center of both financial and social life in late-nineteenth-century Columbia.

The Canal Dime Savings Bank was closely associated with Edwin W. Robertson, who became its president. Robertson later expanded his banking interests, and the Canal Bank eventually became part of the Loan and Exchange Bank of South Carolina in 1898. The building subsequently housed several banking institutions, including the State Bank and Trust Company and the People’s Bank of Columbia. In 1936, the property was acquired by Eckerd’s Drug Store, whose conversion of the first floor substantially altered the original storefront while leaving much of the important second- and third-story façade intact.

The building’s later history also gave it an important place in Columbia’s civil-rights heritage. During the period when Eckerd’s operated a luncheonette in the building, African American students Simon Bouie and Talmadge Neal participated in a protest there on March 14, 1960, after being denied service because of their race. Their arrests and convictions eventually led to the landmark Bouie v. City of Columbia case, in which the U.S. Supreme Court overturned their convictions in 1964. The building therefore represents not only Columbia’s nineteenth-century commercial development but also a significant chapter in the city’s struggle for civil rights.

The Canal Dime Savings Bank was listed in the National Register of Historic Places on November 25, 1980, recognizing its architectural significance and its importance to Columbia’s commercial history. Later rehabilitation efforts restored much of the building’s historic appearance, including reversing many of the alterations made during its long retail period. It remains an important contributing element of Columbia’s historic Main Street commercial landscape and one of the city’s most recognizable nineteenth-century landmarks.