National Builders' Bank was chartered in downtown Chicago in 1927 and managed to weather the Great Depression that followed shortly thereafter. It moved to the recently constructed Art Deco building on the northeast corner of Adams and LaSalle in 1940,changing its name to LaSalle National Bank and maintaining its headquarters there through the early twenty-first century. LaSalle soon grew to become one of Chicago's largest banks, boasting over $100 million in deposits by the early 1950s. By 1965, deposits exceeded $300 million and the bank employed over 500 people. In 1979, LaSalle became a division of Algemene Bank Nederland (ABN), a giant Dutch bank. LaSalle continued to grow after this acquisition, purchasing numerous banks on its own throughout the Midwest over the next two decades. In the early years of the new century, LaSalle was Chicago's second-largest bank, with more than one hundred branches in the Midwest, over $50 billion in assets, and 10,000 employees in the Chicago area.

This entry is part of the Encyclopedia's Dictionary of Leading Chicago Businesses (1820-2000) that was prepared by Mark R. Wilson, with additional contributions from Stephen R. Porter and Janice L. Reiff.