Crocker Bank – Public Art and Architecture from Around the World

The First National Bank Building

Posted by Cindy on June 24, 2013

Jun 242013

1 Montgomery Street
Financial District

This classic Italian Renaissance bank building was designed by Willis Polk in 1908. Polk has been in this website many times. The Raymond granite entryway is only the tease to a beautiful and highly ornamented interior, replete with a carved white marble staircase; counters and benches of carved marble along with bronze tellers’ windows, and hardware.

Originally the Crocker-Citizens National Bank (absorbed by Wells Fargo in the 1980’s), the building has been extensively remodeled. It originally housed an 11 story office tower above it and was sheathed in terra cotta.

One of its more outstanding features is the rotunda entrance supported by granite pillars, with its coffered ceiling.

Originally a “combination bank and office building” it is now one of the most lavish banking interiors in the city. 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 but it incurred an interesting reaction from Polk who sued the architect, Charles E. Gottschalk, for plagiarism.

By 1960 the sandstone façade was crumbling. So Milton Pflueger, whose brother Timothy was the city’s most influential architect in the 1930’s 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 roof of the bank is now a garden for the Crocker Galleria Shopping Center.

Found on both the interior and exterior of the windows are these little bats. They were designed by Arthur Putnam. Within the frieze, also done by Arthur Putnam, are mountain lions, wolves and foxes.

Arthur Putnam has also appeared many times in this website. Why bats? I have no idea, other than Putnam was well known for his animal sculptures.

Star Maiden a relic of the Pan Pacific Exposition

Posted by Cindy on March 6, 2013

Mar 062013

1 Sansome Street
POPOS
Open During Business Hours

Star Maiden by Stirling Calder

(Alexander) Stirling Calder attended the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, in 1885, at the age of 16. Here he studied under Thomas Eakins. He apprenticed as a sculptor the following year, working on his father’s extensive sculpture program for Philadelphia City Hall, and is reported to have modeled the arm of one of the figures. In 1890, he moved to Paris where he studied at the Académie Julian under Henri Michel Chapu, and then was accepted in the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts where he entered the atelier of Alexandre Falguière.

In 1912, he was named acting-chief (under Karl Bitter) of the sculpture program for the Panama-Pacific Exposition, a World’s Fair to open in San Francisco, California in February 1915. He obtained a studio in NYC and there employed the services of model Audrey Munson who posed for him for Star Maiden (1913–15) – (labeled Star Girl on this piece).

For the Exposition, Calder completed three massive sculpture groups, The Nations of the East and The Nations of the West, which crowned triumphal arches, and a fountain group, The Fountain of Energy.

Nations of the West was a massive sculpture group that crowned the Arch of the Setting Sun. The second group, The Nations of the East (including a life-size elephant), crowned the Arch of the Rising Sun.

Bronze’s, if the molds are available, are easy to replicate and therefore there can be many copies of an original piece. This replica was commissioned by Citigroup in 1985 with permission from Margaret Calder Hayes, daughter of Stirling Calder and brother of Alexander (Sandy) Calder.

Star maiden sits in this atrium and is one of San Francisco’s many POPOS. What is now the conservatory was the original structure of The Anglo and London Paris National Bank, which through a series of mergers and consolidations over the years became the Crocker Anglo Bank branch of the Crocker Bank in 1956 and continued to occupy the building through 1981.

Completed in 1910 by renowned San Francisco architect Albert Pissis as The Anglo and London Paris National Bank, the buildings original construction was a steel frame, reinforced concrete, granite clad two-story building constructed in traditional temple form complete with 38’ high Doric columns. Like many other banks built in San Francisco at the time, it was designed in the classical temple form to symbolize the significant role of the financial institution in the community.

In 1915 the bank expanded into the adjoining Holbrook Building at 58-64 Sutter Street, and in 1921 another San Francisco architect, George Kelham, was commissioned to design an addition to the building. The resulting design nearly tripled the area of the original building and expanded the Sansome Street frontage from one to five bays. The Kelham addition repeated the same giant order of the original building but placed the entrance in the recessed porch as it stands today.

CitiBank placed a 43-story office tower adjacent to the original bank structure in 1980, preserving only the original bank as the conservatory and a cutaway of the front that can be viewed if one enters the office tower lobby.