• Former Bank of Italy/Bank of America
• 3377 Pacific Ave. house
• Donaldina Cameron House
• Former Crocker Bank Headquarters
• John Wright Buckham house
• Pacific Telephone and Telegraph Co.
• Former Telegraph Hill Neighborhood Association
• Pacific Union Club
• Mechanics' Institute
• Tadich Grill
• Abbreviations

A rich facade that, like some other buildings in the district, economizes by using expensive granite cladding on the ground floor and inexpensive terra cotta that mimics granite on the upper floors. The white marble interior is a real jewel box. Historic views of the city are on display (Woodbridge and Woodbridge 1992: 29).

An altered version of the winning design of a much publicized competition for a new Bank of Italy, predecessor of the Bank of America. The most interesting submittals in the limited competition were by Charles Paff and Co., for a more French design with a high base whose proportions recall those of Coxhead's Home Telephone Co. building of the same year, and by Loring P. Roxford who embellished his design with caryatids at mezzanine and capital levels.

The existing design is a variation of a three part vertical composition with a giant order transitional story beneath the capital. Ornamentation is Renaissance/Baroque. The steel frame structure is clad in granite at the deeply rusticated ground level, with terra cotta above. The ground floor banking hall was altered in 1921 by John H. Powers, and again in 1975 by Mario Gaidano. It remains an especially rich interior with fine marble furnishings and a coffered ceiling. Environmentally, the building is significant as the end of the post-fire financial district which, historically, gave way at this point to earlier buildings which either did not burn or were rebuilt. Recently, this adjacent area has changed from a pre-fire to a post-1970 area, strengthening the sense of this building as a bulwark of the old financial district. This corner is thought to be the landing place of Captain J. B. Montgomery in 1846, before Yerba Buena Cove was filled in. A (Corbett and Hall 1979: 210).

Julia Morgan showed her affinity for the new Shingle Style with 3377 Pacific (1908) (Wiley 2000: 279).

In 1873 the Presbyterian Church set up a foreign mission to serve San Francisco's Chinese. After the original hall burned in 1906, a new one was built on the present site and officially named for its famous director in 1942. The architect was rightly favored by many eleemosynary institutions; she knew how to design practical buildings that had dignity and presence (Woodbridge and Woodbridge 1992: 43).

Farther west at 920 Sacramento, the Donaldina Cameron House (8) is the first of four Chinatown buildings designed by Julia Morgan. This structure, which was home to the hundreds of young women and girls that Cameron and her associates rescued from the slave trade, was completed in 1908 with the use of the firebrick saved from the ruins of the original building after 1906. Morgan worked with the mission's board of directors, which permitted Cameron no input about the design of the interior. Cameron disliked the size and layout of the upstairs living quarters because they did not contribute to the family atmosphere she was trying to create. Fortunately for both Cameron and Morgan, they were able to collaborate on a remodeling job in the 1940s (Wiley 2000: 186).

The old bank building's 1908 banking hall [was] designed by Willis Polk (Woodbridge and Woodbridge 1992: 25).

Willis Polk's Crocker Bank for decades connected one of San Francisco's most prominent names with the financial district's most prestigious address at One Montgomery Street. There is no longer a Crocker Bank (it was absorbed by Wells Fargo in the 1980s), but the little vampires created by sculptor Arthur Putnam still ornament its bronze window trim. In 1983, through an odd, Faustian compromise with the city planning department, the bank building was decapitated, leaving only the white marble and bronze lobby, so extravagant that it seems intended to make the lowly depositor wonder whether he is good enough to keep his money in such a place. In return the city allowed construction of the 37-story Crocker Center (now called Telesis Tower) designed by Skidmore, Owings and Merril with their usual egg-crate façade. The adjoining Galleria supposedly a contemporary version of the famous Galleria in Milan, has a vast arched glass top, offering the ultimate challenge to window cleaners (Alexander and Heig 2002: 370-71).

The original Crocker Bank Building (37) (1908) (see illustration on page 133) at 1 Montgomery, now Wells Fargo, was the work of Willis Polk. When another architect copied his design for an extension of the banking hall along Montgomery, Polk sued him for plagiarism. By 1960 the sandstone façade was crumbling. So Milton Pflueger, whose brother Timothy was the city's most influential architect in the 1930s and 1940s, redesigned the façade for the upper floors. When Crocker proposed a new world headquarters tower and galleria further west on Post Street, the city provided air space in exchange for the demolition of the upper floors of the building at 1 Montgomery. The banking temple with its lavish original interior is now topped by a roof garden, and the Crocker Galleria and Office Tower (1983) by SOM are stacked up to the west of it on Post Street (Wiley 2000: 166).

A "combination bank and office building" with one of the most lavish banking interiors in the city, but also with an unfortunately remodeled tower above the banking hall facade. The tower was remodeled about 1960 by Milton Pfleuger after the old sandstone facing appeared to be in danger of falling off. The original design was a three part vertical composition with a giant order in the upper zone. In 1921 the banking hall and its arcaded base were extended to the north in an exact copy of the original design. This extension made a grand interior even grander with its sumptuous marble furnishings, fluted columns, and coffered ceilings, but it incurred a characteristically flamboyant reaction from Polk who sued the architect, Charles E. Gottschalk, for plagiarism.

Up until the time of its remodeling, the building occupied a key position in what must have been one of the finest intersections of monumental buildings in America. Across Post Street and occupying the Market Street gore was A. Page Brown's flatiron Crocker Building, across Montgomery was Clinton Day's Union Trust Co. Building, and across Market were the Merchant's National Bank Building (M53) and the Palace Hotel (M54), still standing. The tower of the Hobart Building (M45) was visible over the Union Trust. Despite tremendous losses in the immediate area, the Crocker Bank is still an extremely important building at its location. Its arcaded base and columned entrance vestibule form rich street facades in contrast to the newly prevailing sterility of the area. And the tower, despite its remodeling, still displays in its form a knowledge of how to fill a space at an important intersection.

Crocker Bank is presently planning to remove the tower above the grand banking hall and build a new highrise west of Lick Place. A shopping arcade would front on Lick Place and a tower would rise in the southwest corner of the black, displacing the Lick Garage, the Foxcrofdt Building (R148), the Thompson and Ortman Building (R92), and the Lyons Building (R93). Architects of the project are Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill. A (Corbett and Hall 1979: 104).

A facade composed of boldly scaled Classical elements in projected and recessed forms. Coxhead's skill at manipulating the Classical vocabulary is nowhere better shown than in the entrance composition, where an elegant portal with a swan-necked pediment is fused with an arch tied at the top by an outsized keystone to the belt cornice above. Don't miss the giant columns' capitals (Woodbridge and Woodbridge 1992: 15).

The headquarters of the Home Telephone Company was Coxhead's only significant contribution to the massive rebuilding effort in San Francisco²⁴ (Longstreth 1998: 304).

The authors of Splendid Survivors single out the Pacific Bell Building (30) (1908) at 333 Grant, by Coxhead and Coxhead, as unique among the downtown commercial buildings because of its "assertively, intelligently 'incorrect' use of [oversized] detail" in the façade (Wiley 2000: 198).

Although superficially in the style of other urban buildings of the period, this stands apart from most in its self-conscious, mannered treatment of ordinary details. Most of San Francisco's downtown buildings use historical ornment in a purposefully "correct" way, in a way designed to achieve contextual objectives, as a decorative veneer, or unconsciously, merely as the prevailing style of the time. Few attempt the sort of assertively, intelligently "incorrect" use of detail achieved in this building. The oversized details and the unexpected juxtapositions of the scale of parts of the facade result in a complexity of design that manages to be successful in several ways at once--from its function as a part of the urban fabric to its interest as an isolated object. In composition, the building is a three part vertical block surmounted by an attic, with a giant order in the shaft. Its ornamentation is Renaissance/Baroque. It is a steel frame structure clad in Colusa sandstone. The rich plaster lobby ceiling is hidden by a drop ceiling, but is still intact. This was one of at least three designs by Coxhead for the Home Telephone Co., for which this was originally the headquarters building. A (Corbett and Hall 1979: 136).

From about 1910, the top two floors of 36 Panoramic Way were occupied by the biochemist/physiologist Thorburn Brailsford Robertson and his wife Jane ('Jeannie') just after they were married. Robertson was born in 1884 in Scotland, educated in Australia, and came to Berkeley to study with Professor Loeb.

Evidently Professor Robertson was in the habit of walking down the Bancroft Steps to the lab, as evidenced by a family photograph captioned "On the Way to the Lab," kindly provided by his great-granddaughter, Jude Skurray of Melbourne, Australia.

In 1916 or 1917 the Robertsons left Berkeley and travelled to Russia to meet Pavlov. After this, the Lewis family moved into 36 Panoramic Way. Upon their return, the Robertsons took up lodging at 2619 Regent Street, where they remained before they left Berkeley for Toronto and later returned to Adelaide, where Robertson held a professorship at the University of South Australia.

In Who's Who among the Women of California, 1922, Mrs. J. W. Buckham's address is given as 36 Panoramic Way. John Wright Buckham published John Know McLean: a Biography in 1914, and in 1915 he published The Contribution of Professor Royce to Christian Thought in the Harvard Theological Review. His Mysticism and Modern life was published the same year by Abingdon Press, New York.

The online archive of California contains a Guide to the Papers relating to John Wright Buckham's book, George Holmes Howison: Philosopher and Teacher, 1929-1935. Howison built the philosophy department at the University of California after a stint at M.I.T.. and organized the Philosophical Union, where William James publicly introduced pragmatism. Dagobert D. Runes' Dictionary of Philosophy, 1942, places Buckham among the Theistic Personalists.

An historic neighborhood center founded by Alice Griffith, a pioneering social worker, the building's alpine chalet style was often used by Maybeck. The many alterations of form and use have preserved the attractive courtyard (Woodbridge and Woodbridge 1992: 50).

Bernard Maybeck designed the Maybeck Building (25) (1907) at 1736 Stockton to be the Telegraph Hill Neighborhood House (1907). Two women formed the Telegraph Hill Neighborhood Association in 1888 to provide assistance to immigrant families (Wiley 2000: 247).

Because it was built of Connecticut brownstone and not wood, Flood's mansion survived the 1906 fire that devasted the more ostentatious homes of his neighbors. When the gutted shell was to be restored as the new home of the Pacific Union Club, William Bourn, Willis Polk's great patron who was on the building committee, got him the commission. Polk's sensitive remodeling, which consisted of adding wings and altering the top floor, improved the proportions and changed the architectural character from that of a dry, tightly drawn 19th-century town house to a more free and gracious Neoclassical 20th-century manor house. The interiors, accessible only to membersw, are the quintessential image of a gentleman's club. The bronze fence surrounding the property is the city's finest; Flood allegedly employed one man just to polish it. West of the club is Huntington Park, where stood the David Colton house later purchased by Collis P. Huntington, who gave the land to the city after 1906. This oasis features a replica of the Tartarughe Fountain in Rome minus the tortoises. To sit in the park on a sunny day is to feel on top of the world (Woodbridge and Woodbridge 1992: 61).

The then-fashionable brownstone had to be imported from the East at vast expense. To those fortunate enough to penetrate within, the dining room in the west wing presents the quintessence of a great club room. Polk's work also included adding windows in the attic story and suppressing an awkward tower over the entrance (Gebhard, Winter and Sandweiss 1985: 75).

The James Flood mansion at California and Mason Streets, built of Connecticut brownstone and surrounded by the most expensive bronze fence in the city, survives today in altered form as the Pacific Union Club. After the interior burned in 1906, Willis Polk designed substantial changes: he placed curved wings on the sides and added a third floor, replacing the squat tower on the original (Alexander and Heig 2002: 207).

"Yielding precedence to none," said the San Francisco Newsletter, "this massive mansion standing on California Street, between Mason and Taylor, is a monument to wealth!" Architect Augustus Laver included every luxurious detail that Comstock silver could buy. This new building stood out in startling contrast to its wooden neighbors, for its walls were of dark, reddish-brown Connecticut sandstone. The house was long celebrated as the only brownstone dwelling west of the Rockies, but its most outstanding feature was a magnificent $30,000 bronze fence. Tradition has it that the Floods retained a servant whose sole duty was to keep the fence polished to a dazzling brightness. Otherwise, the exterior was a model of restraint compared with the appointments within.

Once again, the Newsletter reporter went into paroxysms of delight. The grand entry hall boasted vaulted glass ceilings upheld by enormous, carved caryatids. Naturally, there were the requisite silk-hung walls, acres of jewelled art glass, marquetry floors and sliding doors which could be thrown open to create one vast salon of the entire ground floor. The whole effect was indeed overpowering.

During the 1906 fire, it was hoped at first that the thick stone walls of the Flood house would withstand the flames, but unfortunately the many paintings and furnishings moved from the neighboring Hopkins Art Institute and piled on the Flood lawns by the militia spelled the doom of the Flood house as well. The art works were ignited, and the fire leaped to the mansion. The walls survived, but the interior was destroyed, leaving a masonry shell.

After the fire, the members of the Pacific Union Club purchased the Flood property. Willis Polk, by then one of San Francisco's most prominent young architects, convinced the club directors to spare the ruined walls. By adding a third floor, Polk modified the awkward "millionaire's tower" with an elevated roof line. He also extended the rooms to the right and left of the central mass into rounded wings. Despite the restraint used in the redesign, the sheer scale of the interior is still overwhelming. The imposing house with its bronze fence is the only pre-fire Nob Hill mansion still standing today (Alexander and Heig 2002: 206, 209).

August Laver, the original architect for the first City Hall built in the Civic Center, designed the Italianate Flood Mansion (1886), which later became the Pacific Union Club (2) on the northeast corner of Mason and California. James Flood and William O'Brien were the owners of the Auction Lunch Saloon. With James Fair and John MacKay, they wrested control of the Comstock silver lode from the grasp of William Ralston and went on to strike the Big Bonanza. Impressed by mansions in the East, Flood insisted on brownstone, which was brought precut from a quarry in Connecticut. The use of brownstone in this 42-room, $15 million structure saved it from total destruction in 1906 when it was gutted, while the rest of the Nob Hill mansions, ersatz stone fashioned from wood, were reduced to ashes along with most of their precious furnishings, libraries, and artwork. Flood's daughter sold the gutted structure to the Pacific Union Club, which held an architectural competition for its restoration. Albert Pissis won with a proposal for an Acropolis-like structure on the site. The club turned him down, awarding the job to Willis Polk, another club member. Acquiring brownstone from the same quarry in Connecticut, Polk designed a lavish interior, complete with swimming pool surrounded by Minoan columns and an illuminated stained glass ceiling, and added the semicircular wings on the eastern and western sides of the building and a third floor. The original bronze fence surrounds three sides of the mansion. Forget about getting into this very exclusive club (Wiley 2000: 264).

One of the state's first educational institutions with a fine library on the arcaded floor. A mural by Arthur Mathews is in the marble elevator lobby (Woodbridge and Woodbridge 1992: 26).

Across the street [from the Crocker Galleria and Office Tower] at 57 Post is the Mechanics Institute Library (1909) (38) by Albert Pissis. The Mechanics Institute was founded in 1854 to provide education for workingmen. Some of its board members formed the nucleus of the group that founded the city's public library system (Wiley 2000: 166-67).

One of the state's earliest educational institutions, located at this site since 1866, and an excellent example of a mixed use building whose internal functions are clearly expressed in the external design. The ground floor with its commercial space and monumental entranceway is surmounted by two floors of well-lit library floors, with offices above that. The composition is a three part vertical block. Ornamentation is Renaissance/Baroque. The marble elevator lobby is decorated with an Arthur Mathew's mural and is the endpoint of a very beautiful circular iron and marble stairway. The Mechanic's Institute itself occupies three floors, two of them housing the merged Mechanic's Institute and Mercantile libraries, and the third including one of the oldest chess clubs in America., The rest of the building is occupied by offices. It is a steel frame structure with brick curtain walls. The building is a major San Francisco cultural landmark. A (Corbett and Hall 1979: 148).

The restaurant started up in 1865 on the site of the Transamerica pyramid and moved here later. The interior is a fine period piece, but the facade also deserves notice for the simple elegance of its terra-cotta frame (Woodbridge and Woodbridge 1992: 33).

Tadich's Grill (60) across the street [from the Industrial Indemnity Building] is another venerable eating establishment. Also a nineteenth-century Produce Market restaurant, Tadich's migrated around the financial district until the Redevelopment Agency forced the owner to relocate in 1967 to the site of a 1920s restaurant on California Street. The beautiful and colorful façade by Crim and Scott> fronts a simple room with a long horseshoe bar and private eating nooks along one wall (Wiley 2000: 171).

Previously Chris's Cafeteria and now the Tadich Grill, this building has long been a landmark restaurant and retains an interior that dates at least as far back as the 1920s. Tadich's has been in existence in San Francisco since 1865 at two previous locations. One of the finest buildings of its type in the city; in composition, it is an enframed window wall with Renaissance/Baroque ornamentation. The handling of materials and colors is superb. Although easily mistaken for copper and bronze, all but the bronze window frames is actually terra cotta. Although the architect is unconfirmed, the design has been attributed to the firm of Crim and Scott. This firm designed a strikingly similar building for the Landry C. Babin Co. at 423 Kearny Street, also built in 1909, now demolished. Reinforced concrete construction. A (Corbett and Hall 1979: 193).

Abbreviations