Post-Earthquake
Hibernia Bank
Hibernia Bank
One Jones Street
Architect: Albert Pissis
At the time of its construction in 1892, the bank was lauded by Willis Polk and like-minded admirers as the “most beautiful building in the city”. The building “clearly declares its purpose and the interior arrangement is plainly expressed by the exterior,” Polk wrote. Polk’s admiration has not been entirely displaced by time, for the Hibernia, like the Flood, is elegant and powerful.
One Jones Street
Architect: Albert Pissis
At the time of its construction in 1892, the bank was lauded by Willis Polk and like-minded admirers as the “most beautiful building in the city”. The building “clearly declares its purpose and the interior arrangement is plainly expressed by the exterior,” Polk wrote. Polk’s admiration has not been entirely displaced by time, for the Hibernia, like the Flood, is elegant and powerful.
James Flood Building
James Flood Building
870 Market Street
Architect: Albert Pissis
Designed for millionaire James L. Flood in 1905, it was newly completed when it was gutted by the 1906 fire. Traces of the discoloration caused by the great heat of the fire can still be seen in the handsome sandstone arch of the main entrance, but the very substantial structure resisted the fire sufficiently to allow reconstruction with the original twelve-story walls after 1906
870 Market Street
Architect: Albert Pissis
Designed for millionaire James L. Flood in 1905, it was newly completed when it was gutted by the 1906 fire. Traces of the discoloration caused by the great heat of the fire can still be seen in the handsome sandstone arch of the main entrance, but the very substantial structure resisted the fire sufficiently to allow reconstruction with the original twelve-story walls after 1906
Citizens' Federal Savings and Loan Building
The Citizens’ Federal Savings and Loan
Building (originally the Mutual Building)
700 Market Street
This building provides an excellent example of preservation combined with a thoughtful modern enlargement. William Curlett designed the building in 1902 on a site which did not include the corner lot. When the present owners decided to renovate the structure, they purchased the corner lot and commissioned Clark and Beuttler to design a new annex. This addition in modern in materials and basic concept yet entirely compatible with the original building’s Mansarded style. Sensitivity and imagination have given the owners an exceptionally fine Market Street headquarters.
700 Market Street
This building provides an excellent example of preservation combined with a thoughtful modern enlargement. William Curlett designed the building in 1902 on a site which did not include the corner lot. When the present owners decided to renovate the structure, they purchased the corner lot and commissioned Clark and Beuttler to design a new annex. This addition in modern in materials and basic concept yet entirely compatible with the original building’s Mansarded style. Sensitivity and imagination have given the owners an exceptionally fine Market Street headquarters.
Merchants Exchange
Merchants Exchange
465 California Street
Architect: Willis Polk
The tallest building in the financial district at the time of the 1906 earthquake was the Merchants Exchange. This fifteen-story, steel-frame structure, with Tennessee granite and brick sheathing, was designed by Willis Polk in 1903; it traces its ancestry back to a three-story brick building of 1851 located about two blocks north on Battery Street. The original Merchant Exchange furnished a library and meeting room and posted information on arriving ships and cargoes. The latter-day skyscraper was intended to provide some of the same services to the business community.
The great hall of the Exchange, now modified as a bank office, is still decorated with some of the best and most appropriate San Franciscan murals - paintings executed by William Coulter, a leading maritime artist of his place and time. Other touches of period architectural art can be seen in the bronze eagle heads and lamps of the exterior, designed by Julia Morgan. Miss Morgan can also be credited with the inspiring interior appointments.
The days are gone when the merchants of San Francisco gathered there over one thousand strong to approve the plans for the 1915 Exposition or to condemn the 1934 general strike, and the Merchants Exchange is now just another building. But the great glass-roofed foyer and the adjacent meeting hall are reminiscent of that former era.
Click Here> for the official website of the Merchant Exchange
465 California Street
Architect: Willis Polk
The tallest building in the financial district at the time of the 1906 earthquake was the Merchants Exchange. This fifteen-story, steel-frame structure, with Tennessee granite and brick sheathing, was designed by Willis Polk in 1903; it traces its ancestry back to a three-story brick building of 1851 located about two blocks north on Battery Street. The original Merchant Exchange furnished a library and meeting room and posted information on arriving ships and cargoes. The latter-day skyscraper was intended to provide some of the same services to the business community.
The great hall of the Exchange, now modified as a bank office, is still decorated with some of the best and most appropriate San Franciscan murals - paintings executed by William Coulter, a leading maritime artist of his place and time. Other touches of period architectural art can be seen in the bronze eagle heads and lamps of the exterior, designed by Julia Morgan. Miss Morgan can also be credited with the inspiring interior appointments.
The days are gone when the merchants of San Francisco gathered there over one thousand strong to approve the plans for the 1915 Exposition or to condemn the 1934 general strike, and the Merchants Exchange is now just another building. But the great glass-roofed foyer and the adjacent meeting hall are reminiscent of that former era.
Click Here> for the official website of the Merchant Exchange
Kohl Building
Kohl Building
400 Montgomery St.
Architect: Willis Polk
Designed by Percy and Polk in 1901, it shows Polk’s preoccupation with extravagant details as well as advanced construction. A rather plain structure up to the tenth-floor cornice, it suddenly turns into a riot of bold variations and exaggerations of Baroque and Classical styles (Partly lost with the removal of numerous lions heads in the recent interests of public safety).
The building is constructed around a steel frame, the interior employes metal lathe and plaster, the sheathing is of a handsome greenish-gray Colusa sandstone. Perhaps the first “fireproof” building in downtown San Francisco, it survived the 1906 fire intact above the fourth story, while all other buildings, once ignited, were gutted.
Alvinza Hayward, also one of Ralston’s Bank of California associates, put up the building which was later purchased by the Kohl interests. It has been said that the unusual “H” shape was the result of Mrs. Hayward’s superstitious regard for initials — a story not out of character with the nature of San Francisco’s first generation of millionaires.
400 Montgomery St.
Architect: Willis Polk
Designed by Percy and Polk in 1901, it shows Polk’s preoccupation with extravagant details as well as advanced construction. A rather plain structure up to the tenth-floor cornice, it suddenly turns into a riot of bold variations and exaggerations of Baroque and Classical styles (Partly lost with the removal of numerous lions heads in the recent interests of public safety).
The building is constructed around a steel frame, the interior employes metal lathe and plaster, the sheathing is of a handsome greenish-gray Colusa sandstone. Perhaps the first “fireproof” building in downtown San Francisco, it survived the 1906 fire intact above the fourth story, while all other buildings, once ignited, were gutted.
Alvinza Hayward, also one of Ralston’s Bank of California associates, put up the building which was later purchased by the Kohl interests. It has been said that the unusual “H” shape was the result of Mrs. Hayward’s superstitious regard for initials — a story not out of character with the nature of San Francisco’s first generation of millionaires.
Mills Building
MIlls Building
220 Montgomery Street
Architect: Burnham & Root
Designed by the famous Chicago firm of Burnham & Root and erected in 1891-92. This ten-story, foursquare brick structure picks up the Richardson Romanesque style in its massive, intricately-carved, arched entrance, in the arches crowning the modified Corinthian pilasters that delineate the vertical line of the building, in the repetition of the Romanesque arches in the ninth-floor frieze, and in the squat columns between the windows of the top story. Yet the building as a whole is a powerful expression of the style that was developing in Chicago in the heyday of Burnham and Sullivan and the young Frank Lloyd Wright.
The Mills Building was built by Darius Ogden Mills, a Forty-niner who parlayed a Sacramento shop into a partnership in William C. Ralston’s Bank of California, and went on to become one of the authentic financial moguls of late-nineteenth-century America.
Willis Polk supervised the reconstruction of the Mills Building after the fire of 1906, and was also in charge of the additions of the rear of the building, which he executed in the same style as the original. In 1931 the adjacent twenty-two-story Mills Tower was completed to the design of Lewis Hobart.
Click Here> for the official website of the Mills Building
220 Montgomery Street
Architect: Burnham & Root
Designed by the famous Chicago firm of Burnham & Root and erected in 1891-92. This ten-story, foursquare brick structure picks up the Richardson Romanesque style in its massive, intricately-carved, arched entrance, in the arches crowning the modified Corinthian pilasters that delineate the vertical line of the building, in the repetition of the Romanesque arches in the ninth-floor frieze, and in the squat columns between the windows of the top story. Yet the building as a whole is a powerful expression of the style that was developing in Chicago in the heyday of Burnham and Sullivan and the young Frank Lloyd Wright.
The Mills Building was built by Darius Ogden Mills, a Forty-niner who parlayed a Sacramento shop into a partnership in William C. Ralston’s Bank of California, and went on to become one of the authentic financial moguls of late-nineteenth-century America.
Willis Polk supervised the reconstruction of the Mills Building after the fire of 1906, and was also in charge of the additions of the rear of the building, which he executed in the same style as the original. In 1931 the adjacent twenty-two-story Mills Tower was completed to the design of Lewis Hobart.
Click Here> for the official website of the Mills Building
The Monadnock Building
Monadnock Building (1907)
685 Market Street, Suite 550
Architect: Frederick H. Meyer
Construction on the exquisite Beaux-Art style Monadnock Building began in 1906. Before its west wall was even completed, the Great San Francisco Earthquake and Fire struck. Somehow the building managed to survive not only those calamities, but two separate attempts by the U.S. Army to destroy it with dynamite, hoping to create a firebreak that was intended to save the original Palace Hotel.
Hidden Treasure:
There is a twenty-four foot barrel-vaulted atrium lobby has outstanding Tieolo-inspired trompe l'oeil murals, featuring famous people from the city's past, by the Evans and Brown Co.
The theme of this mural is "San Francisco Renaissance." It is painted in the Renaissance Baroque style trompe l'oeil (which means to fool the eye) and chosen because the facade of this building was inspired by that period. That is why all these San Francisco and California characters are dressed in such costumes.
Click Here> to read more about these outstanding murals and the history of the building.