Manufacturers Hanover Corporation - History - Manufacturers Trust Company

Manufacturers Trust Company

Manufacturers Hanover traces its origins to the 1905 founding of Citizens Trust Company of Brooklyn. Through a series of acquisitions, the bank would grow into one of New York's largest banks within its first twenty years. Citizens Trust's first major acquisitions came with its mergers with the Broadway Bank of Brooklyn in 1912 and then two years later with the Manufacturers National Bank of Brooklyn (1914). In 1915, the bank adopted the older "Manufacturers" name, changing its name to the Manufacturers Trust Company. The "Manufacturers" name had been in use since 1858, when the Mechanics' Bank of Williamsburgh (founded 1853) was renamed the Manufacturers National Bank. Coincidentally, Manufacturers Trust Company had also been the name of a Brooklyn-based bank, founded in 1896 and acquired in 1902 by the Title Guarantee and Trust Company, another Brooklyn bank.

Manufacturers Trust acquired a Manhattan presence with its acquisition of the West Side Bank of New York in 1918. Later Manufacturers Trust acquired the Ridgewood National Bank of Queens (1921), the North Side Bank of Brooklyn (1922), the Industrial Bank of New York (1922), the Columbia Bank of New York (1923), and the Yorkville Bank of New York (1925), to become the 29th largest bank in the United States by 1925.