If your parents or grandparents lived in Baltimore, chances are that their bank was one of hundreds of small building and loan associations that dotted the city. Those little corner store thrifts were such shoestring operations that they were usually open only one or two nights a week. Many didn?t even have a telephone. (What today is known as Hull Federal Savings and Loan in Locust Point finally got a phone in 1989, when federal regulations required it).

Decades ago, banking regulations were so nonexistent that when the feds surveyed Baltimore?s mortgage landscape in 1937, they estimated the number of building and loans at 700. A more precise number could not be established, because no one kept a list of building and loans, the feds said. Yet these ma-and-pop lenders made it possible for ordinary Baltimoreans to buy a rowhouse.