Dale Balzano’s foray into the hotel field began 17 years ago when he and two business partners purchased a brick building in downtown Carlsbad, New Mexico. The former First National Bank, constructed in the late 19th century, may have once stashed the cash of Sheriff Pat Garrett, who did business in the building and is known for taking out the notorious outlaw Billy the Kid.

After an arduous 18-month, $2 million–plus renovation, the owners fully reopened the building in 2009 as the nine-room Trinity Hotel & Restaurant. With 3-foot-thick concrete walls that held its two-story safe, which the owners converted into a guest room and a retail shop, the hotel has a past life that draws guests, according to Balzano. “People want to rent that room,” he says. “The kids can sleep in the safe, and they like that.”

Across the country, hotel developers and hospitality firms are transforming historic buildings that housed some of America’s earliest banks in the late 19th and early 20th centuries into luxury boutique hotels. Many contain classical columns, soaring ceilings, and grand marble hallways converted into sumptuous lobbies and restaurants that appeal to the design-driven traveler. Hotel developers and designers have preserved period details, believing that they will attract visitors. In some cases, the building’s metamorphosis has played a critical role in a city’s urban renaissance.

“These properties are such gems,” says Vishal Savani, managing director of Savara Hospitality, the hotel group that operates the two-year-old Liberty Trust Hotel in Roanoke, Virginia. A historic landmark built in 1910, the building once housed Roanoke’s First National Bank and was reimagined as a 54-room hotel. “These spaces are grand. They provide you with a trip back in time. You’re not going to be able to build a structure today that’s going to be able to match that.”

Savara preserved The Liberty Trust’s terrazzo floors and about 50 original copper doors leading to the guest rooms. “If you go up to your guest room, you’re likely going to be opening up a historic copper door—how amazing is that?” Savani says. “We’ve tried to carry the design elements of an early 20th-century bank building into our guest rooms.”

Guests checking into The Langham, Boston often ask to see a celebrated room in the former Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, which dates to 1922, says hotel Managing Director Michele Grosso. The Wyeth room, once the bank president’s ornate office with arched floor-to-ceiling windows and a gold coffered ceiling, now functions as a private event space. (It’s named for the N.C. Wyeth murals that adorn two walls.)

The bank hotels’ restaurants often contain remarkable design details that captivate guests and locals alike. The Langham’s Grand Hall, now the hotel’s Italian restaurant, Grana, features an original bank seal in the center of the floor, a popular photo spot. “It shows you how meaningful it is to [people] to see a historic room,” Grosso says.

The speakeasy in The Quoin Hotel in Wilmington, Delaware, serves classic and original cocktails in the Security Trust and Safe Deposit Co.’s former “money room,” which stored gold bars, jewelry, furs, and other valuables. Original vaulted brick ceilings and exposed stone walls ensure that the 1885 brownstone’s historic appeal extends to the patrons of the basement speakeasy, called Simmer Down. “We intentionally preserved these elements as a nod to the building’s rich heritage,” says Daniel Olsovsky, executive creative director of Philadelphia-based design, development, and hospitality company Method Co., which worked with Stokes Architecture + Design on the project.

The hotel entryway’s focal piece, Spectralline, designed by SOFTlab, features colorful, asymmetrical, crystalline structures illuminated with LED lighting. Its bright colors contrast with the mostly-white lobby, Medeiros says. “When you first come in, you see the vaulted ceilings, all of this lovely white marble, and then you get this vibrant piece of art. It’s a burst of color with a beautiful marble background.

Shaker furniture, plush beds, and cozy seating areas at The Quoin give the Victorian-era Romanesque building a residential feel. Inspired by other buildings designed by its prolific Gilded Age architect, Frank Furness; Shaker craftsmanship; and the nature found in the surrounding Brandywine Valley, the Method Co. design team filled the 24 rooms with plants, floral fabrics, and wallpapers, Olsovsky says. “We want our guests to feel at home when they escape to The Quoin for a stay.”

In addition to their ornate designs, former bank buildings possess another asset that makes them good hotel conversions: location. The Liberty Trust, for instance, is located in the heart of downtown Roanoke, a block from the city’s Amtrak station and near restaurants, museums, and other attractions. Savani says it “was built as a monument to Roanoke’s arrival as a large economic powerhouse in the region.” Many of these adaptive reuse hotels are centerpieces of their cities’ urban revival, coinciding with the opening of cultural attractions, recreational spaces, and a growing population. Downtown Los Angeles has witnessed increasing interest in preserving its 1920s-era buildings, including the former Bank of Italy structure that opened in 2022 as the 241-room Hotel Per La.

“Los Angeles has so many remarkable buildings from the expansive urban development that occurred in Downtown Los Angeles during the 1920s,” says Kayleen Morgan, the hotel’s director of sales and marketing. Guests can see the original bank vault and many of the safe-deposit boxes in the basement, as well as the original bank foor, ceiling, and crown molding. The original entrance and two bank signs are also still intact.