A tale of two once-proud banks for immigrants on Chicago’s Southwest Side
1913 was a good year for European immigrants and their children seeking homeownership on Chicago’s Southwest Side. That year saw the creation of two savings banks just three miles apart, one in Brighton Park and the other in Bridgeport.
I know about the first one, Grunwald Savings, because it was founded by my grandfather, Edward Obrzut and associates, to bring homeownership to their many striving, industrious fellow immigrants. Obrzut had several other business ventures, including building a number of the solid brick bungalows that still stand stately today on the Southwest Side. My mother grew up in one of those bungalows, with her six siblings, on South Komensky Avenue. I have a single memory of being in that house in about 1949. A year later, in
1950, my parents secured a loan from Grunwald to finance an addition to my boyhood home in Garfield Ridge.
Obrzut ran Grunwald for some years and was succeeded by his son, my uncle Carl Obrzut. Grunwald Savings thrived, eventually moving to a modern new building at 83rd and Kedzie. But the savings & loan industry collapsed in the early 1980s, in part from treacherous, mogul owners such as Charles Keating of Lincoln Savings infamy and five complicit U.S. senators, including the revered John McCain. Consolidation ruled and Grunwald disappeared in 1982 after 69 honest and scandal-free years.
I was reminded of the history of Grunwald Savings as I read the terrible tale, in the Sun-Times, of the other 1913 savings bank that served early 20th century Polish immigrants on the Southwest Side, Washington Federal Bank for Savings. Unlike Grunwald, Washington survived to the third generation, run by the founder’s grandson, John F. Gembara. But after 104 years, Washington collapsed — 12 days after Gembara killed himself in the luxury home of a client as the Feds apparently were closing in. At some point, Washington Savings apparently may have sunk beneath a gargantuan loan fraud scheme. Eight former Washington employees and clients have been indicted.
I’m proud of my Polish heritage, and I’m proud of the financial institution founded by my grandfather to uplift his countrymen. The legacy of Washington Federal is too sorrowful to contemplate.