Take it to the Bank

Preserving Oregon's historic bank buildings

By Sarah Murdoch

According to Google’s A.I., “the United States has many luxurious wineries, including ones in California, Washington, Oregon and other states.”  While the robots claim our Western states own the most opulent estates, you don’t have to travel far in Oregon to discover historic buildings repurposed into tasting rooms. 

One typical building found in almost every main street community combines grandeur and history– yet sets the imagination on fire– is the town bank. Converting banks and bank vaults into tasting rooms captures the stories, legacies, charm and the tapestry of the town. Family wineries protect these buildings from being razed and condo-ized. With their wealth of stories, historic banks are perfect settings to set up shop.

As Betty Tamm of Triple Oak Vineyard jokes: “Banks really like to harbor their money, holding as much as they can. Well, that is proving true with the wine; it keeps accumulating; coming in faster than it is going out.”

An interesting fact about Oregon is how you can visit both luxury and small-town nostalgic tastings, all in a day. Here are a few tasting rooms in former banks to plan your journey:

We start in the Umpqua Valley. If you’ve never heard of Oakland, Oregon, you’re not alone. Two miles off I-5, many of the 1,000 residents and business owners sense they’re on the cusp of something great—some even say a renaissance.

Walking through Oakland affords a nostalgic glimpse back in time. There are brick buildings on main street, a soda fountain, and the first hotel south of Portland to feature both hot and cold running water in each room. It’s both beautiful– and, at press time– for sale.

Travel Oregon reports few communities have better preserved their history. In fact, Oakland was the first city placed on the state’s historic register, in May 1968.

Triple Oak Wine Vault

Built in 1892, Oakland’s E.G. Young and Company Bank is the current home of two separate tasting rooms. The first, Triple Oak Wine Vault, prides itself on having one of the best wine caves in the region, says owner Betty Tamm. “The big brick building sits on a foundation of hand-hewn basalt blocks, walkable along the full 80-foot length of the building. It’s always cool and slightly humid, perfect for wine storage. The only problem is that the historic building does not have an elevator or even a dumbwaiter, so what goes down must come up, one case at a time.”

Founded in 2000 by Tamm and her late husband, Paul, they planted three acres of vines. After his death in 2013, Betty assumed management of the vineyard, still maintaining his rigorous standards of growing excellent grapes. This is evident in Triple Oaks’ consistent awards for its Tempranillo, a staple of the Umpqua Valley thanks to Abacela’s Earl and Hilda Jones.

Tamm and her new husband, Geoff Faraghan, tend to the vines and operate the tasting room. Tamm, which means “oak” in Estonian, has fun with the space being a former bank. Their annual Saint Patrick’s Day tradition is distributing a key to everyone visiting the tasting room. Each key unlocks one of the vault’s 70 safety deposit boxes where they’ve hidden prizes like Susan B. Anthony dollars, chocolate coins, and even gold-medal winning bottles of wine.

With Tamm’s entrepreneurial mind always busy, they plan to repurpose the Triple Oaks’ tasting room in the mornings as a coffee shop. Also featured will be a local chocolatier which Tamm says has “almost a cult following for her Squatch-Mallows.”

The couple also craft a non-alcoholic juice from their Pinot Noir grapes. “I make a really tasty Italian soda with it,” says Tamm. “It’s just smart to offer an NA beverage to designated drivers and those who choose not to drink. It’s nice having something other than root beer when everyone else is tasting wine.”

Above the tasting room is an indoor basketball court used by the 1910 girls’ high school team. They have remodeled the space into apartments, but Tamm says you can still see lines on the floor and scores written on the walls.

Home to more than one bank robbery, a memorable one in 1959 involved robbers toiling in the basement nightly to chip away at the floor with jackhammers whenever the train would pass, masking the noise.

One morning, an insurance agent renting office space noticed how cold the building was. He walked downstairs and discovered the robbers’ lair and realized they had snagged the oil line to the furnace. He called the police chief who set up a sting to nab the would-be robbers.

Fast-forward to present day, Tamm and Faraghan hosted an elderly rancher recently. “He kind of sauntered in the room wearing overalls,” Tamm said. He remarked, ‘I think this is the bank my dad tried to rob. Dad and his friend got into all kinds of trouble, but this time he went to jail!’”

Oakland Creek Vineyards

Adjacent to Triple Oak is Oakland Creek Vineyards, also in the E.G. Young Bank Building but on the other side of the solid brick wall dividing the two spaces. Founded by Dr. Rachel Schelble, whose family’s wine journey began in 2022 after purchasing an 80-acre ranch with eight acres of planted vines. They make sparkling wines from Pinot Noir, Pinot Meunier and Chardonnay. Other planted varietals include Syrah, Primitivo, Viognier, Sauvignon Blanc and Orange Muscat.
Schelble treasures the building’s rich history and central location in Oakland. “When you look around this town, it’s hard not to see the potential as an up-and-coming wine destination in Southern Oregon, with two distinct tasting rooms and five historic buildings currently for sale. Oakland’s location as the gateway to the North Umpqua wine region allows it to stand on its own, creating a unique wine niche that blends both old and new.”

Schelble banks on crime stories to the delight of tasting room customers, her favorite being the one in May, 1947; at 10:30 am, soon after the bank opened for business, two masked gunmen burst in. According to newspaper reports, the thieves said “This is a stick up,” to a customer ironically named Thrift who was gathering payroll checks for employees at the store he owned down the street. Bank employee and namesake Ed Young told the robbers to leave Thrift alone as he was 80 years old; the robbers directed the terrified employees and customers to line up against the wall.

They absconded with a haul close to $30,000 (today’s value about $500,000), an astonishing sum for the small, close-knit community of 500. The News Review of Roseburg front page story read, “The bandits took pennies and nickels, but completely overlooked the bundle of $20 bills lying on the counter,” about $5,000 uncollected in the teller’s cage (more than $70,000 today).

The robbery’s mastermind, Henry Clay Tollett, was a fugitive on the FBI’s ten most wanted list. Four years later, he was wounded by California Highway Patrol after fleeing from a routine traffic stop. Tollett died in Alcatraz Prison Hospital from a gunshot wound to the stomach, ending his crime spree of bank robberies all over the West.

Atelier Freewater

High at the top of the Eastern Oregon border is Milton-Freewater, home to Atelier Freewater, a picturesque freestanding building in the middle of town, painted midnight blue offset by glorious white Grecian columns. The first bank of Freewater, it was constructed in 1906 as the J.L. Elam Bank, which also had a branch in Walla Walla.

Bought by Carrie and Todd Alexander, the couple moved from Napa Valley, settling in the Walla Walla Valley in 2018. Carrie has worked in wine and hospitality for decades with husband Todd, who’s also winemaker for Force Majeure and WeatherEye Vineyards, founder of Beatus Wines and co-founder of PÁŚXA Wines. The Atelier allows them to highlight their many wine brands: Holocene, Force Majeure, WeatherEye and Beatus.

The Alexanders researched the building’s history so it could be added to the National Historic Register. Although the bank had many lives throughout its 118 years, J.L. Elam’s original bank vault is still intact and in working order. The building has previously been home to law offices, doctors’ offices, a second bank, an insurance agency, a restaurant and served as Freewater’s U.S. Post Office.

Interestingly, Milton and Freewater began as two separate cities. Freewater was started as a sister town to Milton, mainly due to the prohibition of alcoholic beverage sales, drawing new residents by advertising how they could live there and have free water. In the 1950s, the two towns merged to form Milton-Freewater.

The Alexanders envision great promise here. “We live in Milton-Freewater, and we would like to see the town revitalized,” Carrie said. “The bank had been sitting empty for a couple of years, and we would drive by and think what a nice building it was. There isn’t a lot of traffic but people do visit the Walla Walla Cheese Company across the street. It is a beautiful standalone building and the perfect size for us. It was formerly a restaurant with a full commercial kitchen, great for hosting small dinners for those on our mailing list.”

Along with being an ideal spot to showcase their premium wines and how they complement food, its location in small The Rocks District of Milton Freewater AVA is an asset. Carrie says, “This is an incredible region for growing wine grapes and now that there are a few wineries and tasting rooms here, it’s possible to spend a full day or more just on the Oregon side of the Walla Walla Valley.”

Pheasant Run Winery

Heading west to the Willamette Valley is Pheasant Run Winery in historic Aurora, original home of the Aurora State Bank. In 2010, Carl McKnight, proprietor/winemaker and his wife, Tara (Fleischmann) McKnight, bought the building while he worked as the assistant winemaker at St Josef’s Winery.

Before the McKnights bought it, the Historic Aurora Bank Building was featured briefly in a couple of scenes from the movie “Bandits,” starring Bruce Willis, Billy Bob Thornton and Cate Blanchett.

Originally part of an exhibition for the 1905 World’s Fair in Portland, also known as the Lewis & Clark Centennial Exhibition, the building was constructed for approximately $300, before being transported and rebuilt to its current site in Aurora. Carl has had several collectors offer memorabilia from the era, including the original teller cages.

A celebrated building with over a century’s history is bound to contain a treasure trove of tales, and, as we’ve learned, where there’s cash… there’s plenty of folks willing to take it. Starting with recent history, Carl said “during the 2023 Aurora Wine & Chocolate Walk, one of our guests was reading an article posted in the winery. Recognizing his Great Uncle, “he figured out why his family never talked about him– he was the “Embezzler” featured in the newspaper clipping on our walls.”

“Embezzler” is also the namesake to Pheasant Run’s Petite Verdot Blend. The story goes that decades ago, the owners of the Aurora State Bank changed the name overnight to the Aurora National Bank to prevent customers from withdrawing their money, preventing a run on the bank. They soon were brought to federal court on mail fraud charges but the court hearing was delayed so everyone could attend the opening day of baseball season.

In another anecdote, a staffer named Emma worked at the bank for four days in 1922, and managed to steal the equivalent of $30,000 today, which she claimed was an attempt to woo back her husband. Carl said she told The Oregonian, “I knew that if I could get a big amount of money, my divorced husband would marry me again. I had determined to see him and arrange for our remarriage even before I took the money.”

The bank did not press charges as they had been cooking the books at the same time. Emma did remarry a few years later, with McKnight finding this headline: “Divorced Lady Bank Robber weds Vancouver Man.” This discovery formed several wine names, including “Sweet Emma,” “Bank Roll” White Blend, and “The Crooked Banker Cabernet.”

Like other winemakers occupying historic banks, the McKnights predict a bright future for their town. Carl says, “Aurora is a great town with over 900 residents. Since we’ve been here, it’s evolved from nearly all antique and vintage shops to include Filbert’s Farmhouse Restaurant; White Rabbit, a gluten-free bakery; good friendly pub called Colony Pub, Grannie Fi’s, a tearoom with Scottish shortbreads; along with roaster Pacific Hazelnuts and a chocolate maker. It’s tough to have a sustainable business in any small town that needs visitors and their dollars. We believe in being part of the community and offering good things at a fair price. This year marks Pheasant Run Bank Vault Reserve Wines’ 15th anniversary and we are very grateful for everyone supporting us and Aurora.”

Sarah (aka Sally) Murdoch runs Puncheon PR and has marketed many iconic sports and beverage brands, which eventually led her to the Oregon Wine Board where she headed communications for almost seven years. A native Portlander and Oregon Duck with a journalism degree, she is an avid tennis player and captains a number of tennis teams. She recently made Forest Grove her home, and her go-to winery is David Hill Vineyards & Winery. Visit sallymurdoch.com to learn more.