Bank of California

The Bank of California building is modeled after the Knickerbocker Trust Company building in New York City, and is San Francisco Landmark #3. Founded in 1864, the Bank of California is the oldest incorporated commercial bank in California. The bank moved into a new building at this location in 1868. Work was already underway on a replacement building when the April 1906 earthquake rocked the city. Construction was complete in 1908. A 22-story tower annex was completed in 1967. The building held a branch of Union Bank of California, a successor to Bank of California, after a merger in the 1990s. Free displays in the basement were called the Bank of California Gold Rush Museum and later the Museum of Money of the American West. Union Bank was acquired by U.S. Bancorp in 2022.

William Chapman Ralston (1826-1875) was a businessman who was responsible for founding the first commercial bank in the western United States, the Bank of California. Ralston began working in the banking industry in San Francisco in 1856. The bank opened on July 5th, 1864 with Ralston as the cashier and a banker from Sacramento, Darius Ogden Mills, as president. At the first meeting of the bank's stockholders, Stephen Franklin was elected secretary. The first location was an existing building on the corner of Battery and Washington Streets. The initial stock of $2 million was increased to $5 million in 1866. The bank was successful and began paying dividends in 1866. The Bank of California moved into a new, two-story building on this same street corner as the present building in 1868.

The Bank of California's major profits came from the financing and repossessing of defaulted mines. The bank helped finance the Southern Pacific Railroad, steamship lines, and especially the Comstock Mines in Nevada. The bank closed in late August 1875 after a time of volatile trading of Nevada mining stocks. Ralston had over-extended the bank's funds by questionable investments. There was a run on the bank, with crowds in the street demanding their money. The next day, Ralston was asked to resign from the bank and turn over his assets to William Sharon, his business partner. Ralston did so and drowned the same day while swimming in the bay. Mills and Sharon reorganized the bank, and it reopened in October 1875.

The next president of Bank of California was William Alvord, who served until his death at age 73 in 1904. Alvord also held the offices of mayor of San Francisco, police commissioner, parks commissioner, and president of Security Savings Bank over his long career. A long-time banker with Wells Fargo, Homer S. King, became the next president of Bank of California, and served while the new building was being constructed. The bank temporarily moved to another location in early 1906 when construction was begun on their new bank building, so this street corner was not occupied when the great earthquake and fires struck the city in April 1906. Work was resumed later in 1906 and the building opened in 1908.

The design was by the architectural firm of Walter Bliss and William Faville; the men had previously been part of a firm that designed a similar building in New York City, the Knickerbocker Trust Building. The steel frame, reinforced concrete building was three stories tall and styled like a classical temple, with Corinthian columns on three sides; each granite column weighed nearly 100 tons. The central banking room, finished in marble, featured 56-foot-tall ceilings and measured 80 feet wide by 120 feet deep. A 1908 newspaper story called the building one of the finest counting houses in the country. There was an elevator in the northeast corner leading up to the legal and land departments. The building cost was reportedly $900,000.

The bank was granted a national bank charter in 1910 and became the Bank of California, National Association. It had out-of-state branches in Portland, Seattle, Tacoma, and Virginia City. In that same year, the bank acquired the San Francisco National Bank. A free museum on the history of the Gold Rush and money was installed in the lower level by the late twentieth century; a link provides a webpage with views of the museum in 2013.

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Smith, Pete. Money Museums in the U.S., Part One, The E-Sylum, Numismatic Bibliomania Society newsletter. December 3rd, 2023. Accessed June 24th, 2025. https://www.coinbooks.org/v26/esylum_v26n49a16.html.

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