Grand designs for High Street banking

From the Maitland Mercury report:
Banking began in Sydney in 1817 when the Bank of New South Wales opened its doors with an ex-convict as its first teller.

In 1836, branch banking began in Australia when the Commercial Banking Company of Sydney opened in West Maitland and three years later the Bank of Australasia hurriedly set up a branch at East Maitland.
Thereafter the banks of prosperous Maitland never looked back and by 1858 the local Bank of New South Wales held deposits of £96,000.
Only Sydney and Melbourne held more and the brisk business of the district facilitated the construction of a series of outstanding bank buildings.
The first of these came in 1860 when the Bank of New South Wales constructed a new bank to the design of one of the colony’s most talented architects, Edmund Blacket.
SOURCE:The Rise of High Street, Maitland - A Pictorial Historyby John Turner

Full article available at Maitland Mercury, April 7, 2013.