Rodney C. Paine (1806–1875), formerly of New York State, moved in 1842 to Niles after a six-year stay in St. Joseph. Here, he established an agency of the Farmers and Mechanics Bank of Michigan, which later, in 1848, became his own private business. In 1843 he erected this small, one-story, Greek Revival building on the northwest corner of Main and 3rd streets. It is a wood-frame, pedimented, temple-like tetrastyle building with fluted Doric portico and pilasters at the corners. Architect Emil Lorch hailed this work in the Niles Daily Star (February 9, 1957) as “Niles's most formal classical composition with proportions which are those of masonry rather than of wood.” Built in an unstable era of wildcat banking practices and of the Panic of 1837, the Greek Revival architectural style symbolized a sense of stability and reason.