"On October 15th, Heritage Bank reaches a significant milestone. Our Centennial. One a hundred years in business. Only four other St. Tammany businesses have endured longer. Perhaps, it’s an opportunity to stop and reflect.
We were established on that date in 1924, when a group of leading citizens in rural Covington came together to found a building and loan association to help their fellow citizens save for and build homes for themselves. My, how St. Tammany has changed in 100 years! The Great Depression, the post WW2 baby boom, The Lake Pontchartrain Causeway, the turbulent ‘60s, the oil industry crash and the failures of so many savings and loans in the ‘80s, and the housing crisis of the 2000s. As other financial institutions came and went, The Homestead endured. How? By embracing conservative values and resisting the urge to chase after the hurried - some would say unplanned - growth of our parish. As in the timeless fable, our leadership chose to be the tortoise.
But we evolved, balancing the need to be a stable resource for home buyers with the need to keep up with the evolution of our industry. As the savings and loan industry gradually passed into obsolescence in the 1990s and 2000s, we introduced new products and services and changed our name to Heritage Bank of St. Tammany to better describe who we’ve become, just as St Tammany has become The Northshore. Covington is no longer the market center of a rural parish, but the hub of a thriving local economy, prompting the US Office of Management and Budget’s recent announcement that St. Tammany has been designated as a Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) in and of itself. The Homestead is now a full-service bank with all the techie bells and whistles that define banking’s march into the future, but with the same level of human touch our bank family has come to expect over the last century.
We are incredibly grateful to our loyal customers, whose continued trust and support have been the foundation of our success over the past 100 years. Your partnership has allowed us to thrive and serve the community through every challenge and change.
Therefore, I invite you to celebrate with us; we’re having monthly drawings for gifts at each of our branches and blessing new checking account customers with $100 for simply opening their account. Our long-running Sunset at The Landing Concert Series wraps up our 2024 season on October 18th with some special attractions, and we’ll honor our First Responders with their annual luncheon on October 10th in Covington and November 7th in Slidell.
We press on into our second century brimming with optimism for our community, for our organization, confident that, while we’ll never know what the future holds, we do know Who holds the future. Amen." - David Crumhorn, Chairman / President / CEO
Member FDIC. Equal Housing Lender
