Farmers Branch, State Bank of Ohio

Built in 1860 at 14 Front Street in Ripley, Ohio, this two-story building housed the Farmers Branch of the State Bank of Ohio, the town's first banking concern. Its main facade, facing southwest, is entirely sandstone in a Neoclassical design, with a central bay under a segmental pediment, corbelled posts, and three second-story "kneeling windows" borrowed from Italian Renaissance architecture. A heavy cornice reworks a Doric frieze with metopes and triglyphs. The north side is brick with a blind arcade of four arches and sandstone impost blocks. The rear wall was destroyed in the 1934 Ohio River flood, rebuilt in concrete block around 1940, and veneered with period brick in 1981. Ripley was a busy river port until railroads and canals favored larger towns, and this bank reflects the town's most dramatic period of commercial growth. It is the only remaining 19th century commercial building facing the river on Front Street, Ripley's first commercial area. The bank later became the Farmers National Bank and then the Citizens National Bank, and the building later served as a railroad office.