Willis Polk
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
Hallidie Building
Hallidie Building (1917)
130 Sutter Street
Architect: Willis Polk
Polk’s commercial masterpiece was one of the first buildings in the world to utilize the steel frame for its potential to support a transparent glass wall. The glass curtain wall represents one of the great revolutions in architectural design, turing a building from an opaque mass into a transparent and reflective presence. Here, cast-iron tracery and corner fire escapes add to the impression of a diaphanous curtain pulled from the sides