When Richard A. Hoober walked into the sparkling new Commerce Bank branch on Lititz Pike, 80-year-old memories of his father and grandfather instantly came to mind.

Hoober, 87, went to admire Commerce Bank's modern glass-and-brick architecture in November, but he found himself staring at a huge mural of Aaron R. Hoober's livestock business at the old Lancaster Stockyards.

"It's not everyday that you enter a business and instantly recall your childhood, but the memories flooded back — right there on the wall was my grandfather's shop," Hoober said.

Harrisburg-based Commerce Bank creates murals in all of its branches by colorizing and enhancing actual historical photographs. The images are digitally processed and printed on heavy-duty paper.

Founded in 1895 along the old Pennsylvania Railroad at the boundary of Lancaster City and Manheim Township, Hoober's business at the stockyards traded cattle, hogs, sheep and horses.

The Lancaster Historical Society supplied Commerce with the picture, which was taken sometime in the 1920s. The photographer was standing directly in front of railroad tracks that ran only a few feet from the store, where men unloaded livestock from Chicago and farther west.

The Lancaster Stockyards mural, which measures about 7 by 13 feet, was applied like wallpaper. Another Commerce mural at 23 Rohrerstown Road in East Hempfield Township portrays road construction on Columbia Pike, west of Lancaster, in 1927.

Eric Warfel, Commerce regional vice president, said the bank looks for archival treasures with help from libraries, historical societies and other local organizations.

"The wall murals in our stores are our way of celebrating and displaying local history," Warfel said.

Hoober spent his entire working life at the stockyards — he says he's the last of the "originals" left. He helped his father John and then his brother operate J.M. Hoober Inc. at the stockyards.

But because the mural depicted a sign advertising his grandfather's business, Hoober found himself thinking back to his childhood.

"I used that building all my life. Right next to the building I worked the scales," Hoober said. "Man did I unload a lot of pigs from those pens over there."

In the mural is an old truck similar to one occasionally used at the stockyards.

"Those were the days when they had solid tires. You felt every stone in the road," he said. "When we got frost on the window we held up candles to make a 'hole' in the windshield so you could see traffic in front of you."

In the early decades of the 20th century, drovers herded thousands of cattle along city streets and into the yards. Other animals arrived by rail and later by truck.

Hundreds of men worked day and night to move the meat to market. By the 1940s, the stockyards were processing more than half a million head of cattle each year.

Livestock then was sold by "private treaty" — individual seller to buyer. In 1964, dealers held their first public cattle auction in a new sales pavilion.

Cattle were driven in one door, weighed, paraded across the arena floor and herded out another door, with buyers bidding as they passed.

Hoober remembers actually driving cattle along Lititz Pike in front of the current Commerce Bank location into Lititz, and then along Oregon Pike to Ephrata.

"In those days you drove cattle. We didn't have trucks," he said. "There were people we called cattle drovers who lived in the hotel at the stockyards who were paid 25 cents to walk cattle to Lititz or Ephrata."

Hoober actually lived on the property with his wife Van until about five years ago, is a member of the stockyard board.

"We've been negotiating to get a deal done to do something with the property, but for whatever reason it has not gotten done," Hoober said.

E-mail: pburns@lnpnews.com