PAWTUCKET – The neoclassical building at 216 Main St. in downtown Pawtucket hasn’t been used as a bank in some time, but if you were to walk inside, you might think you stepped into an early 20th-century time capsule, or a film set about a daring heist.
The checkerboard flooring. The green teller counter. The bathrooms. But mostly, the huge vault — the door of which sits open, but could function again for its original purpose if you got a locksmith to change the code.
It’s now for sale, listed at $749,000. And yes, the spacious vault is included —the building was built around it, like a glass bottle around a model ship. You’d need to break walls to take it out. And who would want to do that, anyway?
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“Walking into the vault is truly a beautiful experience,” said Kira Greene, the listing agent. “I’ve personally never seen anything like this except perhaps in a movie like ‘Ocean’s 11.’”
Greene, a founding agent of Compass Providence — which just opened Jan. 1, as it happens — listed the property on Wednesday. Most recently, it was used by the owner, a mixed-media artist. (You can see some of his paintings in the listings.)
“It really just became a love affair for him to bring it back,” Greene said. “The floors are shiny, every corner is painted.”
It was originally built for the Providence County Savings Bank in 1901, Greene said. Also known as the Albert J. Vitali Building, it’s in downtown Pawtucket, less than a mile from the new soccer stadium a developer is planning to build at the Tidewater Landing site and close to the Pawtucket/Central Falls commuter rail station slated to open later this month. The commuter rail station could be a selling point for Boston-based buyers, Greene said.
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The building is listed at 13,576 square feet, including the old customer-facing bank area and space upstairs to do, well, whatever a buyer wants to do with it. There’s already a kitchen and a place to sleep, but the owner did not use it as a primary residence. In fact, it hasn’t had very many different uses since it was a bank, Greene said.
It’s a commercial building by zoning, but because it’s in the Pawtucket redevelopment zone, it could get various zoning uses and city incentives, Greene said. That’s why they took both a commercial and a residential approach to listing it, leaning more toward residential.
“We’re trying to show this building could be anything,” Greene said, like a restaurant where someone could sip a beer in the vault.
A day after it was listed, the property already has seven showings, Greene said.
Brian Amaral can be reached at brian.amaral@globe.com. Follow him @bamaral44.