About Heritages Trust

Fifty-one years of keeping other people's money carefully

We are a community bank chartered in Ithaca, New York in 1974, still independently owned, still lending within sight of where the deposits come from.

History

How the bank got here

Slowly, and without ever changing the name on the door.

1974
A charter and one room
Eleven local families capitalised a savings bank above a hardware store on Cayuga Street to keep farm lending in the county.
1988
The first commercial book
Lending widened to main-street businesses; the bank underwrote its hundredth commercial mortgage before the decade closed.
2003
Online statements
Customers could read a statement from home two years before most regional peers offered anything beyond a balance line.
2014
Forty years, no sale
Three acquisition offers declined. Ownership stayed with depositors and the families who chartered the bank.
2026
The ledger today
$1.94B in deposits, 18,412 households and businesses, and a service desk that still answers on one number.

What we hold to

If a fee cannot be explained on the phone in one sentence, we do not charge it.

The banker who underwrites your loan is the banker who services it. Turnover at our commercial desk is measured in decades.

The overwhelming majority of what you deposit is lent within a hundred miles of Ithaca.

We hold capital well above requirement and have never securitised a loan we originated.

Leadership

218 Cayuga Commons, Suite 400, Ithaca, NY 14850. The service desk answers mon–fri 7am–9pm et · sat 8am–5pm et.