Guide to AmeriFirst Bank Records

Overview 

Corporate History

Dr. William Homer Walker created First Federal Savings and Loan Association of Miami on August 3, 1933, when he acquired the first federal savings and loan charter ever issued in the United States. The original name of Walker’s thrift institution was the First Federal Savings and Loan Association of Miami. Because it had outgrown two former locations, Walker purchased the abandoned Miami Post Office and Federal Court Building in May of 1937 to house his savings and loan. By 1947, an L-shaped addition was built on to this structure to provide necessary space. The association expanded rapidly and was the first in the Southeast to open a branch office, the Little River Office, between Northeast 83rd and 84th Streets on Second Avenue, on April 23, 1949. By 1958, First Federal had four branch offices. On June 26, 1973, the ribbon was cut on the landmark thirty-two-story First Federal Building, later known as the AmeriFirst Building, at One Southeast Third Avenue in downtown Miami.

The name of the thrift was changed to AmeriFirst Federal Savings and Loan Association in 1979. In November 1986, AmeriFirst converted from a federal mutual to a federal stock savings and loan association. In 1988, a new charter as a federal stock savings bank and the name AmeriFirst Bank was adopted.

Federal regulators at the Office of Thrift Supervision closed AmeriFirst Bank on March 15, 1991, due to its insolvency. At that time AmeriFirst had fifty-five banking offices and $3.66 billion in deposits, and was the fifth largest savings and loan in Florida, but never the less, underwent a severe loss of capital due to commercial real estate loans.

Scope and Content

The AmeriFirst Bank collection consists of newspaper clippings; correspondence; pamphlets and ephemera; photographs; nine scrapbooks; two record books; two video-cassettes; and one reel of film. Material pertains to the structure and operation of the First Federal Savings and Loan Association of Miami, later known as AmeriFirst Bank

The scrapbooks, which document the history of the savings and loan and the construction of the AmeriFirst Building, contain correspondence, photographs, newspaper clippings, and ephemera. Included in the collection is a copy of a report made by the Architectural Consulting and Guiding Committee on the Inter-American Cultural and Trade Center [Interama]. This report contains proposals, specifications, building costs, and plans detailing the site. The subjects of the videocassettes are brief, thirty-second spots on AmeriFirst Bank filmed before 1979 and in 1987. The reel of film contains over five minutes of footage on the opening of the Little River branch of the First Federal Savings and Loan Association.

Restrictions

The collection is open for research.

Index Terms

AmeriFirst Federal Savings and Loan Association
First Federal Savings and Loan Association of Miami
Interama
Liberace
Walker, William H.

Administrative Information

Cite as:
AmeriFirst Bank Collection, Historical Museum of Southern Florida

Provenance:
Gift of Linda Atack, 1994.

Bibliography

AmeriFirst Federal: Our Progress is Miami's Progress. -- In Miami, the Magic City / Arva Moore Parks. Tulsa, Oklahoma : Continental Heritage Press, c1981. p. 177.

Container List