Frederick Cook Allen

Frederick Cook Allen - (1890-1977). Section F, block 4, lot 5A, grave 4.

Fred C. Allen, a founding member of The Beach Bank, which opened in Jacksonville Beach, Florida, on Sept. 10, 1938, came from a banking family. His father, John L. Allen, was a bank cashier in Brunswick, Georgia, and Fred's older brother, Linton Allen, was president of the First National Bank of Orlando in 1942 and state chairman of the Defense Savings Commission. Fred worked his way up from bank clerk in Brunswick in the 1910s to cashier of a Transfer Co. in Orlando by 1930. An assistant paymaster in the Navy during World War I, Allen worked for the Federal Housing Authority in 1938 before starting The Beach Bank.

When The Beach Bank first opened on the corner of Second Street and Pablo Avenue it had only two employees: Allen, the bank's president, and John Pyatt, the cashier, teller, and bookkeeper. By 1955, The Beach Bank employed more than 15 people. Allen and Pyatt were still at The Beach Bank when the leading institution celebrated its 25th anniversary in 1963. The bank's slogan was "Complete Banking Facilities for All the Beaches."

After the numerous bank failures of the Great Depression, the Beaches area was left with a dearth of extant financial institutions. Although banking was considered a precarious business at that time, the Beach Bank opened to serve the community when it was left without a major financial institution. The bank was able to flourish in the late depression recovery years, thanks to the measures established by New Deal programs. Because the New Deal made banking safer and more reliable overall, Beaches residents were able to rebuild their trust in local banking institutions.

Programs such as the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation made banking more secure for all involved parties. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation was instituted with the Glass-Steagall Banking Act of 1933.

From that point on, bank runs became much less likely because of the new separation of commercial and investment banking. Ordinary depositors' savings could no longer be used for speculative investing. Because of this change, bank failures became uncommon after 1933.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation also protected depositors by insuring the depositor in the event of their bank's failure, something that would have been a major concern for anyone who lost their savings in one of the many bank failures of the Great Depression.

While the investing constraints of the Glass-Steagall Banking Act became less applicable as banking evolved and the act itself was formally repealed in 1999, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation remains and deposit insurance has consistently protected depositors in American commercial banking since 1933.

"1st Nat'l Beach Bank Celebrates 25 Years." The Beach News. 11 Sep. 1963.

Cloaninger, Bob. "The Bank Has a Birthday." Jacksonville Journal. 9 Aug. 1966.

KENNEDY, DAVID M. “What the New Deal Did.” Political Science Quarterly, vol. 124, no. 2, 2009, pp. 251–68. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25655654. Accessed 16 Aug. 2023.

Lucas, Robert E. “Glass-Steagall: A Requiem.” The American Economic Review, vol. 103, no. 3, 2013, pp. 43–47. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/23469701. Accessed 16 Aug. 2023.