Northampton’s Silverscape Designs marks end of era in downtown: Viewpoint

For all of his adult life, save for those years in the 1940s when he traveled to Europe with the U.S. Army, my father, R. Donald Simison, worked in only one place.

As much as it was a fixture at the center of my hometown, the First National Bank of Northampton was also a fixture in my family’s life.

The glorious limestone and granite edifice with stunning Art Deco details inside and out and its beautiful, retractable bronze doors has lived most recently as Silverscape Designs. The late Denis Perlman and his family proved faithful stewards of the place since 1993, but it’s come time to call it a day.

Silverscape this week announced its going-out-of-business sale, and the building has been up for sale for $2 million since 2019.

My late brother, Paul, and I often thought how pleased our folks would have been with the bank building having found a second life largely intact. Both had died before Perlman restored the building. Now, as the last one standing in my family of four, I’m left to wonder if the grand old place will find another owner intent on preserving it yet again.

Beginning in the late 1930s, my dad, Don, as he was known since he shared the first name of Robert with his own father, spent decades as a teller in the “cage” farthest to the right as you go in the front door. He’d graduated from Northampton High in the Class of 1934 and took classes at Northampton Commercial College before going to work at the “bank on the corner.” Only late in his career did he land at one of the desks looking out onto Main Street when he became a bank officer, but he was never as comfortable there as when he was interacting directly with customers.

Customers often became friends, or already were. My dad would buy Arnold bread weekly from one and fresh and frozen meats from another. Another customer would not only be hired to install the first aluminum-track storm windows on our home but would teach my mother his family’s recipe for meatballs and sauce.

More than once, I’ve encountered people who would tell me, “I knew your dad when he worked at the bank.” Such was the connection that in some cases still exists in our community banks in the 21st century.

For my brother and me, it was always a treat on the days when our dad wouldn’t walk home from work to jump in the family station wagon with our mom at the wheel to pick him up. As she waited in the car in that pre-texting era, we’d be dispatched to ring the bell high up on the imposing front entryway and be let inside the bank after hours to wait for him. It was a really special day when we’d be able to accompany him inside the vault as he attended to his duties of closing things up. Childhood awe always abounded with these simplest of experiences.

In many ways, the bank family became part of our family. After our mother’s death, one of his work colleagues would become our father’s companion in life until his death in 1991. Today, one of the former tellers still stays in touch. One of my dad’s retirement gifts, a plaque with a large pair of shears used by bankers back in the day and an oft-said phrase attributed to him – “If you can’t do the job right, what the hell did you take it for” – hangs now in my office.

The First National was one of just several downtown Northampton financial institutions doing business during my childhood. The evolution of Northampton’s downtown mimicked the evolution of the banking industry over the past 60 years.

The Northampton Institution for Savings building is now home to Urban Outfitters, and R. Michelson Galleries and the Bueno Y Sano Mexican restaurant occupy what was once the final incarnation of the Northampton National Bank did business. (Across Main Street at the corner of Main and Center streets is The Vault, a vape…