Banks and other buildings – relics of the past?

With consideration and respect for the bank just erected on Route 24 near the Beebe medical complex, let us reflect upon the need for such a building as well as its frequency of use by most of us. At one point in our lives, not that long ago,  we visited an actual bank at least once a week to conduct some sort of fiscal business. A deposit or a cash withdrawal, movement of money from one account to another, and of course, the money order! Each transaction involved a certain amount of effort, especially when one considers the time spent in personal conversation with the teller about our respective families. Recently, let’s say in the past 10 years, an actual physical visit to that financial structure is a rarity. Shall I note that the other customers therein tend to be over 50-60 years of age, and rarely younger. No Starbucks demographic here! We have all learned to enjoy conducting our fiscal business online or even at the ATM, and are quite comfortable with that electronic internet process. I suspect there are hundreds of thousands of us who have not been within a building named bank in years.

I am not at all picking on a new bank building on purpose. There are hundreds of other so-called brick-and-mortar structures which we have come to learn are not as necessary as they once were, due to a worldwide epidemic. The office building in which thousands of humans moved papers and pecked at keyboards to keep the nation’s and the world’s economy in flow appears to have less of a purpose than ever before. Who could have predicted that the work-from-home movement would have swept across the country as it has? Lives have been saved, and the economy, shaky as is it may be, is being maintained. There are currently cubicles upon cubicles (and even actual offices) which lie dormant in these multi-floored buildings which sprang up like flowers during the 1980s and ‘90s. We hardly recall what was located on one city corner or another, but the mindset was, build them and they shall be inhabited. Well, not exactly, anymore!

Dare I go there – to the school building! We spent time, effort, blood, sweat and tears, writing, speaking and even yelling with respect to school buildings, and the young pupils who were being denied entry thereto, in order to ensure their reaching late adolescence and adulthood with proper preparation. We debated the lack of social interaction, and the overlooked benefits of the hands-on teaching/learning process. Parents and others struggled with providing personal instructional assistance to their little ones, while so many bemoaned learning in a boxed electronic screen. The professional educators had to learn an alternative mode of teaching, and so many children were forced into a seemingly uncomfortable method of receiving knowledge. Of some irony, though, is the fact that our young offspring had been receiving information from electronic screens for years, albeit not in a setting called “school.” They seemed to have been doing just fine without that personal touch as they fingered their respective instruments at McDonald’s or Grandma’s. However, when pandemic and pencils attempted an intersection, adult feedback was quick and fierce, offering opinions based on a myriad of myths. Yes, there may be no substitute for direct classroom instruction, but for many children and adults, information gained on screen is information nonetheless, and all still interacted via those electronic squares. However, as with the bank, there is new construction around us with regard to an institution for learning what was once termed the “three Rs.”

We can undoubtedly unearth countless building types and uses which may bear rethinking, given the technology of our times wherein it appears that we can work from and in the comfort of our respective homes via modems. Indeed, we miss the exercise of motor or public transport to a workplace, but a peek at Route 1 (and other major travel arteries) traffic indicates that most of us are still going somewhere during what we once called commuter hours. There is a bit of a conflict here, it seems. The apparent lack of a need for buildings, and yet the pursuit of work travel have us in a bit of a conundrum, but indications are that our traditional daily visits to the office in a building away from home may be a thing of the past.