The bank is named three times over, under the town in the same three languages, and the Hungarian calls it a savings bank where the Serbian and German both call it simply a bank, so the institution described itself differently to each readership. Handwriting in Hungarian runs down the sky.
About this place
The Novi Sad Savings Bank was founded in 1864 and is reckoned the oldest financial institution in Serbia; it became Novosadska banka, which joined the Erste group in 2005. Its house stood on the main square, called Franz Joseph Square under Austria-Hungary and Trg slobode today, next door to the Grand Hotel, and postcards sold the pair together under a double caption, Takarékpénztár és Grand Hotel in Hungarian and Sparkasse und Grand Hotel in German. The building was an eclectic palace with a giant order of columns running through the upper floors and a pedimented centre pierced by a round window, its own name cut across the entablature in Hungarian as Újvidéki Takarékpénztár, with shops at street level. György Molnár, who designed the Town Hall and the Catholic church on the same square, was elected the bank's general director in 1876; who designed its building is not recorded here. One of the archive’s cards names the same house as the Central Bank, Központi Takarékpénztár and Централна Банка, so the institution traded under both stylings.
On the card
UJVIDÉK / НОВИ САД / NEUSATZ / Központi Takarékpénztár / Централна Банка / Central-Bank / […]
- Date
- 1910
- Coordinates
- 45.25705, 19.84584
- Source
- Public online source
- Licence
- Public domain (historical photograph)
- Size
- 770 × 1232 px
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