Aerial survey · USDA NAIP · public domainThe 1914 neoclassical bank that Walter Langford built at First and Hendry, where employees say a man runs the staircase no one can see
2222 First St, Fort Myers, FL 33901
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Privately occupied office building. Exterior viewing from the public sidewalk is free. The building is a stop on paid downtown ghost tours, roughly $25-30 per person.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Level downtown sidewalk at the corner of First and Hendry; building exterior viewable from the street
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1914 · Fort Myers Downtown Commercial Historic District · Neoclassical Bank Architecture · Associated with Walter G. Langford and the Atlantic Coast Line extension
Walter G. Langford (1873-1920) was one of the figures who pushed Fort Myers from a frontier cattle town toward a small city. He is credited with helping make the case for extending the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad to Fort Myers, and as president of the First National Bank he commissioned a permanent home for the institution at the southeast corner of First and Hendry Streets.
Construction began around 1913 on the site of an earlier Heitman-Evans store, and the building was completed in 1914. The design borrowed from Greek Revival banking architecture of the period: Ionic columns rose to a triangular pediment, and the entrance opened into a banking hall finished in white marble. For a town still measured in a few thousand residents, the building was a statement of permanence.
The bank operated through the boom years of the 1910s and 1920s, when downtown First Street filled in with masonry commercial blocks. Over the following decades the building passed out of banking use and into commercial office tenancy. It stands today within the Fort Myers downtown commercial historic district and is identified in local architectural surveys among the early reinforced-masonry buildings that define the River District's character.
Sources
The reputation of the old bank rests on a single recurring account: a man seen moving through the stairwell, described by people who have worked in the building over the years. The figure is said to climb or rush the stairs and then not be there. Downtown ghost-tour narration attaches the figure to Walter Langford, the banker who built the place, though the identification is tour lore rather than a documented claim.
Beyond the staircase figure, accounts collected for downtown Fort Myers haunted-history roundups describe strange sounds, lights that flicker without cause, and small unexplained movements inside the building. These are the ordinary vocabulary of an old commercial building's ghost stories, and they appear across more than one independent write-up of the downtown corridor.
The building is a fixture on the US Ghost Adventures route through the River District, where it shares billing with the old courthouse and the early theaters. Because the interior is private office space, the stories are passed along secondhand on the sidewalk; visitors see the columns and the pediment, not the staircase where the figure is said to appear.
Notable Entities
The former First National Bank stands at the southeast corner of First and Hendry Streets and is visible from the public sidewalk. The 1914 facade keeps its Ionic columns and the triangular pediment that gave the building its temple-front look. The interior is private office space and is not open for casual visits.
The bank building is a regular stop on the US Ghost Adventures walking tour of the downtown River District, which covers the early-1900s commercial core and the stories attached to it, including the running-figure account associated with founder Walter Langford. The tour runs in the evening and is booked through the operator.
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This Fort Myers tour includes First National Bank Building (Langford-Hendry Building) on its route.
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