The only tangible reminder of the short-lived state-owned Planters Bank is this two-story brick building. It represents the Panic of 1837, a nationwide financial crisis that brought about the bank’s liquidation in 1846, leaving the mostly British investors threatening military action against Mississippi into the 1850s. Voters rejected a tax for repayment in 1852, and the 1875 Reconstruction constitution repudiated the debt.
Planters Bank reflects the transition in the 1830s from Federal in the segmental-arched entrance doors to the Greek Revival pedimented front. The banking floor occupied the first floor, and the banker’s residence was upstairs. The building later served as a residence and for many decades as headquarters for the Vicksburg Council of Garden Clubs. The bank’s walled compound with antebellum outbuildings, once a common grouping in Vicksburg and Natchez, was the only one left in Vicksburg when the carriage house burned in 1992 and was demolished in 2002. The two-story kitchen outbuilding remains a shell, and only a section of the wall survives.