Before the Erie Trust Company Building at 10th and State streets was erected in 1928, the Erie Trust Company was at South Park Row and State streets. After the Trust Company moved to its new location at 10th and State, the Elk Club occupied the location for many years until the building was demolished to make way for the current City Hall. Shortly after the passage of the National Bank Act by Congress in 1864, several banks were chartered in Erie.
One of these, Dime Savings and Loan, was founded in 1866; it was reorganized as the Erie Trust Company in 1902. The economic boom following World War I set off a flurry of building activity in downtown Erie,including a ten-story skyscraper,the Commerce Building at 12th and State Streets. By the mid-1920s, the Erie Trust Company had become the dominant banking institution in the city and needed space to expand.
The bank hired the New York City-architectural firm Dennison and Hirons in 1925 to design its new headquarters — the firm also designed the Home Savings Bank Building in Albany, New York. The Erie Trust Company building was completed in 1928 at a cost of $2 million. A year later, the stock market crashed sparking the Great Depression, and, by 1933, the Erie Trust Company went bankrupt.
Its remnants and that of another defunct bank were reorganized into the National Bank and Trust, which continued to occupy its former headquarters now owned by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. The state auctioned off the Erie Trust Company Building in 1943 in a bankruptcy court and was acquired by the Tenth Street Building Corporation, a local real estate company, for $377,000.
The building was renamed after company's president at the time, G. Daniel Baldwin, in 1945; Baldwin died the next year. National Bank and Trust continued to lease the first floor, along with offices on the third, until it was taken over by First National Bank in 1951; First National maintained a presence in the Baldwin Building until the 1980s. Despite its owners operating a large and profitable business, the occupancy in the building decreased to less than 30 percent in the 1970s and 1980s. The G. Daniel Baldwin Building was, again, put up for auction in June 1996.
The Tenth Street Building Corporation donated the building to the Greater Erie Charity Golf Classic where it sold to local developer Tom Kennedy for $315,000 with the proceeds going to charity. Kennedy also owns and oversaw the development of the Palace Hardware Building into apartments and a business center. The Baldwin Building was renamed Renaissance Centre as part of the effort to revitalize the building; a new sign, fashioned to resemble its limestone cladding, was installed over the old name. From its purchase in 1996 to late-1998, Renaissance Centre underwent a $2.2 million restoration. Renaissance Centre was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on August 10, 2000.
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| Erie Trust Company Building, Southwest corner of South Park Row and State Streets (1907) |
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| At the corner of 10th and State streets, erected by the Erie Trust Company, it eventually became the G. Daniel Baldwin Building (year unknown) |
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| Erie Trust Company, it eventually became the G. Daniel Baldwin Building (year unknown) |
