Until it closed its doors in December, the Ohio Savings Bank branch on North Moreland Boulevard was a neighborhood anchor in Cleveland, midway between the mansions of Shaker Heights and the ramshackle bungalows of the city’s east side. Now it sits boarded up, a victim not only of Cleveland’s economic troubles but also of a broader trend of bank branch closings that is falling more heavily on low- and moderate-income neighborhoods.

In 2010, for the first time in 15 years, more bank branches closed than opened across the United States. An analysis of government data shows, however, that even as banks shut branches in poorer areas, they continued to expand in wealthier ones, despite government regulations requiring financial institutions to meet the credit needs of poor and middle-class neighborhoods.

The number of bank branches fell to 98,517 in 2010, from 99,550 the previous year, according to data compiled by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

Observers express concern the vacuum will be filled by so-called predatory lenders, including check-cashing centers, payday loan providers and pawnshops. The FDIC estimates roughly 30 million U.S. households either have no bank account or rely on these more expensive alternatives to traditional banking.

The most recent wave of closures gathered steam after the financial crisis in 2008, as banks of all sizes staggered under the weight of bad home loans. In some cases, banks with heavy exposure to risky mortgage debt simply cut branches as part of a broader restructuring. In other cases, banking companies merged and closed branches to consolidate.

Whatever the cause, there were sharp disparities in how the closures played out from 2008 to 2010, according to a detailed analysis by The New York Times of data from SNL Financial, an information provider for the banking industry. Using data culled from the FDIC and ESRI, a private geographic information firm, SNL matched up the location of closed branches with census data from the surrounding neighborhood.

In low-income areas, where the median household income was below $25,000, and in moderate-income areas, where the medium household income was between $25,000 and $50,000, the number of branches declined by 396 between 2008 and 2010. In neighborhoods where household income was above $100,000, by contrast, 82 branches were added during the same period.

“You don’t have to be a statistician to see that there’s a dual financial system in America, one for essentially middle- and high-income consumers, and another one for the people that can least afford it,” said John Taylor, president of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, a group that advocates for expanding financial services in underserved communities.

“In those neighborhoods, you won’t see bank branches,” he added. “You’ll see buildings that used to be banks, surrounded by payday lenders and check cashers that cropped up.”

Wayne Abernathy, an executive vice president of the American Bankers Association, disputed Taylor’s conclusion, as well as the significance of the data.

“You need to look at the context,” he said. “We’re looking at a pool of more than 95,000 branches, and we’ve had several hundred banks fail, so what would be surprising is if no branches had closed.”

Even as more customers turn to online banking, said Kathleen Engel, a law professor at Suffolk University in Boston, the presence of brick-and-mortar branches encourages “a culture of savings,” beginning with passbook accounts for children and visits to the local bank.

“If we lose branch banking in low- and moderate-income neighborhoods, banks stop being central to the culture in those communities,” said Engel, author of a new book, “The Subprime Virus: Reckless Credit, Regulatory Failure and Next Steps.”

Among individual financial institutions, especially those hit hard by the mortgage mess, the differences between rich and poor communities were especially marked.

Regions Financial, based in Birmingham, Ala., had 107 fewer branches serving low- and moderate-income neighborhoods in 2010 than it did in 2008. The company, which has yet to repay $3.5 billion in federal bailout money, shuttered just one branch in a high-income neighborhood, according to SNL Financial.

A similar trend is evident at some larger institutions as well. Bank of America closed 25 branches in moderate-income areas, while it opened 14 in the richest census tracts, according to the SNL data. Citigroup, whose branch network is considerably smaller than Bank of America’s, closed two branches in the poorest areas and opened three in the wealthiest.