SUMMERS COUNTY W.Va. (Hinton News) – This week’s piece will be relatively short as I do not have much information about this specific photo. In all of my years of doing local research, I have never seen this particular view. And I am not sure what the large crowd of people gathered on the street was about.
This photo was one of several that my friend Tom Hutchison gave to me when he was in the process of moving last year. His grandfather, Oscar Hutchison, had a photo shop in Hinton around the turn of the century. This is one of Oscar’s photos; Tom gave them to me to preserve and add to my collection.
This is one of the early views of Hinton that he had in his collection. The back of the photograph reads: “View of the old First National Bank of Hinton and the National Bank of Summers, C. 1900”. First National is on the left and the Bank of Summers is on the right.
These two banks were located on the corner of Temple Street and 3rd Avenue. I have yet to determine if the building on the right was destroyed by fire or torn down. Or if it was simply remodeled and had the elaborate window moldings removed that you see here, and the first floor refaced with the current green marble
But if you look closely through the hazy/blurred photo to the right, you can faintly make out the octagon-style rooms that jut out on the corner on the 2nd and 3rd floors. Back in the day, these protruding rooms had a roof that went from an octagon shape up to a point. But has since been removed and replaced with a flat roof as it has today.
You can clearly see the more elaborate facade of The First National Bank building on the left. But you can’t make out too well the National Bank of Summers on the left. So I dug up a photo of it by itself so you can see just how stately it was at the turn of the century.
