Photo by Mary Ann Barton
E. Hunt Burke, president and CEO, Burke & Herbert Bank, Alexandria
E. Hunt Burke, president and CEO, Burke & Herbert Bank, Alexandria
E. Hunt Burke is sitting in his office talking one recent morning about how the bank founded by his great-great grandfather began offering free ATM visits. After a survey showed half the bank’s customers were 75 years old, the bank decided to begin offering services that would appeal to a younger demographic.
Burke & Herbert Bank, which sits at Fairfax and King streets, is something of an Alexandria institution since its founding 166 years ago.
“We went from 2,500 ATMS to 400,000 ATMs overnight,” said Burke, who leads the bank as its chairman and CEO. “There’s an expense to that, it’s not cheap.”
The bank has since doubled the number of checking account holders and “the average age of our customer has swung south,” said Burke, 61, who has worked at the bank since the summers of his youth. “They’re not as rich but that’s the future. If someone is opening an account here and they know they can use their ATM anywhere…they may never use it, but it’s getting over the mental hump.”
The bank, with 25 branches, has come a long way since it was founded in 1852 by John W. Burke and Arthur Herbert. “There were these two young guys in their 20s,” Burke said. “Alexandria of course was a thriving port.” They opened the bank’s first office at Prince and Lee streets, near the Athenaeum.
Banking was very general at the time. “You could buy shares in the C&O Canal,” he said. “Or you could buy shares of the bank of the Old Dominion that was at the Athenaeum building. That was the big bank.”
John Burke’s parents had moved to the area from Carolina County, Virginia. The Herberts had “been here forever … they were descendants of the Carlyles, Burke said. “In fact there was something called the Bank of Alexandria that started in the 1700s and it had gone out of business in 1849. So maybe Mr. Herbert was looking to start his own bank.”
The Civil War
During the Civil War, Herbert became Col. Herbert and was in the Virginia 17th Infantry.
“The Mount Vernon Ladies Association bought Mount Vernon and the funds were kept here at the bank because descendants of the Washington families were buddies with the Herberts and so they put the money here,” he said. “So when the Union soldiers first came to Alexandria that was one of the first things they came and looked for.”
Family member John Augustine Washington had sold the estate for $200,000;Union soldiers searched the Burke home but didn't find it — the money was concealed in a drawer under Mrs. Burke’s clothing. A close friend then took the funds concealed under an egg basket to Riggs Bank in Washington, D.C. where it was stowed in a safe deposit box.
“It was terrible here in town, it was a tough place,” Burke said. “A lot of folks in town, including my great-great grandfather, refused to sign an oath of allegiance to the Union which everybody was required to do and a lot of Alexandrians didn’t and were treated rather shabbily because we were at war. They simply were Virginians; it wasn’t really political as much as this was their home and they didn’t like seeing people from other states come take over.“
A parrot on his shoulder
The bank made it through the Civil War years and 100 years later, its quirky personality began to shine after Burke’s father C.S. Taylor Burke Jr., headed the bank in the 1960s, as president.
“My dad brought a personality to the bank it didn’t have before whereas his dad was a little stodgy,” Burke said. “My dad would dress up in funny costumes for pictures.” That included the time he dressed up as the Mona Lisa.
His father also used to sit and scribble out ads that ran in the newspaper and came home one day “probably after too many martinis at Landini Brothers” with a parrot perched on his shoulder he found at G.C. Murphy’s. The parrot, Runyon, became a fixture at the bank.
“People today, no kidding whatsoever, say ‘the parrot approved my loan.’ They’re dead serious,” Burke said. Another quirky fixture: A giant gong that sat in his father’s office that remains in the office today.
All kidding aside, the bank has been successful, Burke pointed out. “It took 150 years for us to reach a billion dollars. We’re now at $3 billion. Things grow faster with momentum. We’re still careful with our loans. We try to make it a fun place to bank. It’s kind of quirky and different.”
Service first
Burke & Herbert recently held its annual shareholders meeting. Its shares purchased at $200 are now worth more than $2,700 a share.
“They’re [shareholders] real happy, they get their dividends,” Burke said, pointing out that “it’s a stock you’re not going to make money overnight with, it’s not bitcoin, but it’s something that’s a long-term hold and we make money every year so we try to be responsible to our shareholders. Most of them are local and most of them are not institutional shareholders.”
“They’re not always breathing down our neck: ‘What were your results this quarter?’ And that sort of thing. Which makes life tense for a lot of institutions.” Some banks are “all about your numbers, numbers, numbers this week because how are you going to sell yourself if you don’t perform?” Burke said. “We take the opposite view. Service first, performance follows and we’ve been very fortunate that way.”
Why would I want to live somewhere else?
Burke notes that while Alexandria is growing, it has its checks and balances. “You keep Old Town looking like Old Town” because of the Board of Architectural Review. “The bad side is there is some cool architecture we wouldn’t entertain,” he said.
“I’ve always thought about pulling up stakes and moving somewhere like California, but the more I stay here — I hear people come here to retire, it’s a top travel destination — why would I want to live somewhere else when we have this beautiful treasure here? he asked. “It’s a neat mix of both new people and people who have been here for generations.”
As for his future at the bank? “I just turned 61. If I stay here, I want to stay in the capacity I’m in. It’s important right now to have that — to have the founder’s family still here and part of it; it speaks loudly.”
“I just started working here when I was 13 and never thought of doing anything else,” he said. His father, who died about 15 years ago, would be proud, he said. “And I think Mr. Burke and Mr. Herbert would have their socks blown off.”
