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We are your neighbors…your friends…your partners. Chain Bridge Bank was founded by civic and business men and woman who live in the McLean-Northern Virginia area. As part of the community, we are tuned into local business and individuals, and committed to the nearly bygone notion of meticulous personal service. At the same time, we are a national bank with the cutting-edge technologies and services you demand. Chain Bridge Bank represents what’s best about both small-town service and state-of-the-art financial products and services. We offer Community Banking Without Compromise.

About Chain Bridge: The Bridge That Washington Himself Crossed

Chain Bridge takes its name from an earlier structure at the present location. In fact, there have been eight successive bridges spanning the Potomac River just below Little Falls. The original, built in 1797, was the very first bridge in the Washington area to span the Potomac. The toll — a hefty 25 cents — had the famously thrifty George Washington complaining about the expense.

When the original bridge collapsed only seven years later, the Georgetown Bridge Company constructed a second. But at only 37 feet above low water, the wooden structure was carried away in a matter of months by floodwaters.

The third span was the eponymous Chain Bridge. A wonder of engineering when it was constructed in 1808, it employed two wrought-iron chains to suspend the bridge from stone towers across 136 feet. By now, the toll had risen to $1 for a two-horse carriage. Unfortunately, just two years later, this structure, too, was washed away by the roiling Potomac.

Later designs abandoned the chains in favor of stone piers and arched trusses, but the name stuck. The Chain Bridge you drive across today was built after the record flood of 1936. It was completed in 1939, using the piers of its predecessor, dating back to 1870. Rehabilitated in the early 1980s, the bridge is surely one of the most beautiful Potomac crossings.