Founding Charles A. Colton (1807–1881), a Hartford, Connecticut, native, moved to Pittsburgh with his family in 1850 to sell insurance. Mills, factories, coal mines, and other industries in the fast-growing Pittsburgh region drew thousands of people in search of work annually, Americans and immigrants alike. Colton recognized the need for a mutual bank to serve the interests of the working class. For $1, anyone could open a savings account. The first day's deposits totaled $53, which included two dollars from Charles Colton's 10-year-old son. With no public shareholders to answer to, the bank is not fixated on stock price but on customer service. Such a structure lends itself to a more conservative business model so that the bank never participated, for instance, in the subprime lending that was so destructive to other banks during the 2008 financial crisis. Though rare in the banking industry, mutual structures are common in the insurance world and even in the investment world.
The Vanguard Group of mutual funds is probably the most famous mutually-structured financial institution. On December 3, 2018, the bank completed its reorganization from a mutual savings bank to a mutual holding company. A mutual holding company results from the conversion of a mutual institution into a parent company of a subsidiary stock company. As a result of the conversion—referred to as mutual-to-stock conversion—the parent company owns a portion of the subsidiary stock company, and the subsidiary receives all of the assets and liabilities of the original mutual company. For owners of the original mutual company—members who, before the conversion, retained ownership and sometimes governance of the mutual—it means the termination of the prior-held mutual rights in exchange for the option to ownership in stock form. As part of the conversion, the mutual holding company may undergo an initial public offering (IPO) where members of the original mutual company are allowed to purchase shares of the new mutual holding company, but Dollar Bank CEO Jim McQuade says that this is not Dollar's intention. The Board Room was added to The Dollar Savings Bank's Fourth Avenue Building in 1896 for $37,981. Image:Dollar Bank 4th Avenue, Pittsburgh.jpg|Fourth Avenue Building Sketch Image:Dollar Bank 4th Avenue, Pittsburgh - east and west wings.jpg|Fourth Avenue Building - Exterior Image:Dollar Bank 4th Avenue, Pittsburgh - Board Room.jpg|Fourth Avenue Building - Board Room
The Great Depression During the 1930s, the main lobby was redecorated. In December 1976, Dollar Savings Bank announced that its assets had reached $1 billion, representing a 17.9 percent growth over just one year before. This was the largest single year of growth in the history of the bank. The bank's net earnings increased more than 200 percent in the previous fiscal year. Dollar Savings Bank installed its first
automated teller machine (ATM) in 1977 On October 5, 2016, Dollar Bank announced that it had agreed to merge with Pennsylvania-based Progressive-Home Federal Savings and Loan. Both institutions are mutual banks. Dollar Bank retained all Progressive-Home Federal Savings and Loan employees and continues to operate the two branch offices in Allentown and Dormont. Following the merger, Dollar Bank's asset size grew to over $7.6 billion. On July 20, 2020, Dollar Bank announced that it became the official retail bank of the
Cleveland Guardians. In 2021, Dollar Bank announced that it had agreed to merge with Standard Bank.
National recognition On April 6, 1998, the Dollar Bank online banking service was inducted into the 1998 Computerworld Smithsonian Innovation Collection. == Operations ==