1 Montgomery Street
Bank building
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1860–1906
Two Victorian buildings, the Lick House hotel and the Masonic Temple, stood on the site until both burned in the 1906 earthquake and fire; neither use returned.
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September 1871
Japanese mercantile firm takes a store
Men who had come with Japan's contribution to the Mechanics' Institute fair of 1871 stayed in San Francisco as permanent residents and set up a mercantile firm, leasing a store in the Masonic Temple at 1 Montgomery Street.
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September 1871
What the firm would trade in
The firm would deal in the staple products of Japan — tea, coal, flax and wax — rather than knick-knacks, and had the means to do business on a large scale, the Bulletin reported.
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1907
The First Federal Trust Company, newly formed by the First National Bank’s stockholders, bought the corner lot where the Masonic Temple had stood.
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1908
Built by Smith & Watson.
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February 8, 1908
The hollow granite column shafts of the corner rotunda, 20 feet tall and each quarried whole, were lowered over their steel columns under Polk's supervision — then a first in building construction.
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March 7, 1908
Nichols contracted for metal trimmings, sash and doors in the vestibule on the Union Trust building for the Union trust company.
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1909
Three painted panels by Gottardo Piazzoni, Commerce, Agriculture and Industry, were made for the bank’s directors’ room.
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November 1, 1919
The bank’s real-estate arm, the Real Property Investment Company, bought the lot to the north on Montgomery Street, then holding a two-storey office building built after 1906.
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May 25, 1920
The bank applied to demolish the building on its new lot and put up a two-storey-over-basement banking hall addition, 160 by 100 feet, tied into the 1908 steel frame and faced to match.
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July 15, 1921
Willis Polk sued the bank’s president Rudolph Spreckels and architect Charles Gottschalk, accusing them of pirating his design for the addition.
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January 10, 1922
Polk lost his suit over the addition’s design; the judge found he had not proved the drawings were his.
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1924
The pressed-copper canopy over the Post Street entrance, Polk’s last design, was completed after his death in September 1924 by his firm with modeler Thomas Gorsuch, sculptor Emily Michels and Forderer Cornice Works.
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1926
The First National Bank merged with the Crocker National Bank; the combined Crocker First National Bank advertised with a drawing of this building, which took the Crocker name.
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October 1947
Architect Lewis P. Hobart remodelled the first-floor real-estate department, removed a vault and added a balcony and mezzanine; Dinwiddie Construction did the $75,000 job.
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April 1962
Architect Milton Pflueger refaced the ten-storey tower in glazed terra cotta for $1,100,000, stripping a million pounds of crumbling sandstone and the Corinthian top; the granite banking halls were left untouched.
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April 17, 1962
Photographed.
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1979
The Department of City Planning's survey rated the Crocker Bank Building "4", and the Foundation for San Francisco's Architectural Heritage rated it "A" in the 1979 downtown survey it published as Splendid Survivors — the top of its four grades, which it reserved for the buildings it judged individually most important downtown. Buildings rated A or B by the Foundation, or 3 or above by the city survey, went onto the List of Architecturally and/or Historically Significant Buildings in the Downtown, adopted by the City Planning Commission on 29 May 1980 in Resolution No. 8600.
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1979
The office floors above the banking hall were demolished for Skidmore, Owings & Merrill’s Crocker Center, leaving only the two-storey banking temple, in exchange for a height variance for the new tower on Kearny Street.
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August 30, 1984
A permit was filed for the last phase of the Crocker Center work here: the rooftop garden on top of the 1908 hall and new second-floor offices; a pink granite parapet band matching the new tower was added the same year.
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1986
Wells Fargo Bank took over the Crocker National Bank and all its holdings, including this building.
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Jul 2015
Ground floor and mezzanine — heating and ventilation remodelled with new duct distribution, three fan coil units, two rooftop condensing units and a new mechanical room on the mezzanine, with lighting revisions and structural support for the plant.
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Feb 2020
Selective interior demolition of finishes and partitions in the basement and on the second floor, with the structure, the exterior and the historic features to remain.
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Sep 2020
Revision to the February 2020 permit, to remove the vaults in the basement.
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March 8, 2022
Designated San Francisco Landmark No. 297, One Montgomery Street (Crocker National Bank Building).
Three of the 792 filings under this address and parcel are shown. DBI files work in the neighbouring 38-storey office tower under the same address, so only filings whose description identifies the two-storey banking hall — its basement vaults, its mezzanine, its historic features — are listed here. Business addresses are usually deferred on this site; this page exists because the address was named in the prompting source. The parcel carries the two-storey banking hall only — the 38-storey tower behind it on the same block is a separate parcel (0292004, 68–82 Post Street), though DBI files its permits under this address.
Nearby
- 44 Montgomery Street Same street
- 68–80 Post Street Same block
- 111 Sutter Street Same block
- 165 Sutter Street Same block
- 120–130 Kearny Street Same block
- 1 Post Street Around the corner
- 582–590 Market Street Around the corner
- 57–65 Post Street Around the corner