Wachovia

Ghost Corp Apparel — resurrecting iconic corporate ghosts.

Wachovia began in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, on June 16, 1879, as Wachovia National Bank. Its 1911 combination with Wachovia Loan and Trust Company helped build a Southern banking institution with a name lifted from the historic Moravian tract around the city.

For most of its independent life, Winston-Salem was the center of the Wachovia universe. The company later developed a genuine dual-headquarters arrangement with Atlanta after its combination with First Atlanta, proving that regional banking could indeed collect cities like trading cards.

A transformative merger took effect on September 1, 2001: First Union was the surviving corporate entity but adopted the Wachovia name. The combined company made Charlotte, North Carolina, its administrative headquarters and grew into a diversified financial-services operation spanning consumer and commercial banking, brokerage, mortgage lending, wealth management, and investment banking.

Wells Fargo acquired Wachovia Corporation on December 31, 2008. The old name subsequently gave way to Wells Fargo across customer accounts and operations, but its towers, signage, and very particular shade of big-bank confidence remained lodged in the memory of the Southeast.

Our Wachovia collection celebrates Winston-Salem origins, Charlotte-scale ambition, and the era when a bank could expand from local trust company to financial colossus—before getting folded into an even larger corporate organism.