Wells Fargo Bank – Public Art and Architecture from Around the World

Systematic Saving is the Key to Success

Posted by Cindy on June 25, 2013

Jun 252013

1 Montgomery Street
Financial District

This pressed copper decorative marquee graces the side entrance to the First National Bank, now Wells Fargo.

There are two figures, one on each side of the marquee that stand and serve as supports. Cornucopias are placed at their feet. A nude male and female figure recline on either side of a medallion that is repeated on both sides of the marquee. Fruit, leaves, wheat, and a griffin are used as decorations.

The medallion reads Systematic Saving is the Key to Success.

The marquee is the work of Emily Michals and was done in 1924.

Information about Ms. Michals was difficult to find, however, thanks to the UC Berkeley Bancroft Library I found an interview with her done in September of 1984 by Micaela DuCasse regarding Liturgical Art.

Here is the introduction to the interview:

Emily Michels was one of the finest art teachers at high school level in San Francisco. She taught at Mission High School for thirty-nine years.

Many future priests, several that would have an influence on liturgical art in one way or another, passed through her classroom and enjoyed her inspiring influence.

She had an unerring instinct for recognizing hidden or latent artistic talent in a student. She worked hard to develop and encourage such talent whenever possible. Those students who benefited by her excellent training and encouragement to go on with it as a life-work or an avocation were always grateful to her, and gave her the credit due her with gratitude and friendship. Among her students was Rev. Terrance O’Connor, S.J., sculptor and teacher and member of the Catholic Art Forum.

Emily was one of the first artists to join the Catholic Art Forum, and she was one of its most enthusiastic and loyal members to its end.
Her contribution as a teacher of a art was invaluable in that area of its aims which was education. This, combined with her knowledge of art in general and her faith and interest in contemporary art in the Church, was reason enough to interview her.

It goes on:

[Note: In filling out the biographical information form requested of interviewees by the Regional Oral History Office, Emily Michels offered some comments about her own work.] She was an architectural scale model maker in the office of Willis Polk, and other architects after his death. She did architectural ornamental sculpture, such as the facade of the Water Department Building on Mason St., San Francisco, figures over the Post Street entrance of the Crocker National Bank, Montgomery and Post Streets, figures for the forestry department panorama and models for heads of wax and papier-mâché mannequins. She taught arts and crafts at Mission High School for forty years, and at senior centers. She was interested in modeling in clay, pottery, painting, plastic, crafts, screen printing, illustration. She prepared and coached students to win free scholarships to the California School of Fine Arts. She was also interested in decorating tables for teachers and church lunches, dinners, banquets,et cetera.

She says about liturgical arts, “I had intended to produce figures and reliefs in terra cotta for the church upon my retirement, but, when I saw the kind of monstrosities in scrap metal and the brutal faces of some statuary being installed in some churches, I quit. I believe that art should inspire beauty, peace. ‘The tranquility of order is peace. ‘ A lot of contemporary confusion and chaos is expressed in what we call contemporary art. I wonder if it has an inspiring place in the church?”

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.

Two Old Banks Still Stand Proud

Posted by Cindy on March 16, 2001

Mar 162001

Grant Avenue and Market Street

Many critics of historical preservation projects complain that the process leaves the building frozen in time. Adaptive re-use proves that this does not need to be the case.

Adaptive re-use, which adapts buildings for new uses while retaining their historic features, can also a sustainable form of development that reduces waste, uses less energy and scales down on the consumption of building materials. San Francisco’s Ghirardelli Square remodel in 1964 marked the first adaptive re-use project in the United States and San Francisco has never looked back.

A prime example of adaptive re-use in San Francisco can be found when comparing the two, classic Beaux Arts buildings that make up the stately entrance onto Grant Avenue from Market Street, the one street in San Francisco that comes closest to embodying the City Beautiful movement espoused by Daniel Burnham.

Coincidentally, both buildings were originally banks. Standing at 1 Grant Avenue is San Francisco Landmark #132: built in 1910 as the Savings Union Bank it was reconfigured for retail through adaptive re-use in the 1990s. The Savings Union Bank was designed by Walter Danforth Bliss and William Baker Faville. Both gentlemen were graduates of MIT and began their San Francisco practice in 1898.

This steel frame building is clad in gray granite. Six Ionic columns hold up its massive pediment 38 feet high. This modified domed temple is derived from the Roman Pantheon. The pediment, designed and sculpted by Haig Patigian, houses a Bas Relief of Liberty. Patigian, an Armenian by birth who spent most of his career in San Francisco, was one of the cities most prolific sculptors during his time.

At one time the front was graced with bronze doors. These doors consisted of four panels designed by Arthur Mathews and were said to be “descriptive of the historical succession of the races in California.” First the Indian, then the Spaniard who was typified by a Franciscan monk, next a miner representing the “American” and then an allegorical representation of a San Franciscan shown as the ideal figure of a youth beside a potter’s wheel modeling one of the new buildings in the city. Those doors have been replaced with glass.

Interior of Retail establishment at 1 Grant Avenue (photo courtesy of Goldstick Lighting Company).

Inside are eight Tavernelle (an old building stone term that means spotted or mottled) marble Corinthian pilasters and columns thirty feet high. These support the main cornice, which is surmounted by an attic and coffered ceiling. The walls are not of marble but of Caen stone. Caen stone is a limestone quarried in France near the city of Caen. It was first used in the Gallo-Roman period. (the period when Gaul was under Roman influence)

Across the street, also built in 1910, at a cost of $1.5 million, stands the Union Trust Company Building, San Francisco Landmark #131. Union Trust merged with Wells Fargo Bank in 1923. The building still houses a Wells Fargo Bank branch.

Photo Courtesy of San Francisco Public Library.

Clinton Day was the architect of this Neoclassical Beaux Arts building. According to the July 1, 1908 San Francisco Call “The structure at Market Street and Grant Avenue Will Be Handsome and Commodious.” Day came from a distinguished California family. His father was State Senator Sherman Day and co-founder of College of California, the precursor to the University of California Berkeley. Clinton Day was a graduate of College of California.

This modified temple design is without a pediment. Its beautiful layered façade consists of carved granite ornamentation, derived from classical antiquity that includes ten columns, a bracketed overhang and a roof crowned by a balustrade parapet. This is all accented by dark iron window framing. The curvature on the Market Street side grounds it nicely to its location.

This well-heeled area of Market Street makes these two banks stand proud, unlike the rundown Mid Market area that holds the Hibernia Bank.

Pediment at 1 Grant Avenue designed and sculpted by Haig Patigian.