The Bank in the Skyscraper
How often do you attend a meeting in a vault? When you work in a converted bank building the answer is, “All the time!” Located in a converted Beaux-Arts style bank in Oakland’s Frank H. Ogawa Plaza, our office is a gorgeous testimony to the history of commerce in the Bay Area. But what is the story behind this grand old building? If these columns, plaster relief murals, and marble detailing could talk, what memories of banks and businesses long gone would they tell?
As all workday musings tend to go, my coworker David Dean and I turned to Google to see what answers we could dig up. Since images are so much more fun to search for, we focused on visual ephemera over text. Here’s what we found:
The Bank In The Skyscraper — First Trust & Savings
Our building, the Westlake Building, is an eleven-story office building built in 1913 by architect Llewellyn B. Dutton. An important early Oakland skyscraper, the Westlake Building helped to define the “16th Street Canyon” - what the Oakland Tribune referred to as Oakland’s first “dark, narrow, windy big-city scape.”
The original tenant was the First Trust and Savings Bank, which was featured in the 1916 Architect and Engineer Magazine article “The Bank In The Skyscraper”. Read it in full here. Focusing on the then-new trend of combining banks with office buildings, the article states:
“It is from the investment standpoint exclusively that the combination bank and office building is proving most attractive. An office building properly executed and in a desirable location is bound to pay a splendid return. This is particularly true in medium sized cities, like Sacramento, San Jose, Oakland, and Stockton.”
Keeping Pace With Progress — The American Bank
In the 1920’s, First Trust and Savings Bank merged with it’s sister bank, Oakland’s First National Bank (they shared an owner and a building architect), to become the American Bank and later the American Trust Company. Positioning itself as a bank in and for the East Bay, they ran some spectacular pro-East Bay ads in the 20’s and 30's.
“The rasp of concrete mixers, the clatter of steel rivetters, the thud of carpenters’ hammers — these are the symbolic sounds of a great metropolis in the building.
Everywhere you go in Eastbay cities you hear them — building, building, building.
They mean thousands on thousands of new people for this wonderful community and more money, greater advantages, and more brilliant opportunity for every one, old resident and new-comer alike.”
The American Bank would become a robust neighborhood bank with branches in Fruitvale, Piedmont, West Oakland, Sather Gate, Dimond, Berkeley, Emeryville, and downtown Oakland. Eventually they would expand to Livermore, Byron, Martinez, Modesto, and Tracy.
Several of these old branch buildings are still standing — although few are still banks. The second downtown branch at 14th and Broadway now holds a wine bar, book store, and a store designing masculine clothing for women. Likewise, the Fruitvale branch is a Rent-A-Center.
Not related to our building specifically, but this article on the Fruitvale branch of the American Bank amuses me to no end. I guess if you’re going for classical architectural references you could do worse than the pope’s villa. For a current view of this branch building, see Google Street View.
Also, this map representing all the East Bay branches is superb. Love the fonts and the tiny scratchings of the bank buildings.
Large Enough To Serve You… Small Enough To Know You — Oakland Bank of Commerce
“Large enough to serve you… small enough to know you” is an amazing tagline. Also, the mid-century fonts and aesthetics of this ad are superb. Formed in 1937, the Oakland Bank of Commerce occupied the Westlake Building until the mid 1950’s.
This ad would have run in local papers such as the Oakland Tribune and marked an era of increased civic boosterism and economic renaissance tied to the booming port and newly opened San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge.
“Oakland’s Bank of Commerce now represents this area’s financial individuality just as larger and finer stores and greater industrial enterprise mark her commercial independence.”
Just as true in 2015 as it was in 1937…
“Banking at its best… expanding one of Americas’s greatest commercial areas Oakland, California.”
I love these matchbooks. In fact, I love them so much I own a copy (Thanks David!). Matchbook use peaked in the 1940’s and 1950’s — the approximate era of these examples — before plummeting due to the popularity of disposable lighters and increased awareness of smoking-related health issues. A common promotional item, branded matchbooks were given away as advertising.
Also, in the age of purposeful language and legalize I find “Any useful purpose…” to be charmingly casual copy for a bank advert. As are the suggestions that one take out a loan for appliances; a purchase that in this day and age is much more closely associated with credit cards.
In this City Hall postcard from the 1940's you can see the Westlake building in the right hand side, behind the Broadway Building and Rotunda Building. Note the flower garden, the placement of the Jack London Oak, the fact that San Pablo cuts all the way through the plaza instead of ending at 16th, and the Key Route trolleys criss-crossing in front of City Hall.
You may also note the lack of surrounding skyscrapers. During this point in time, downtown Oakland greatly resembled Old Oakland with no modern skyscrapers or corporate developments — just mixed use office/commercial/residential buildings of modest height. Many of the structures pictured in this postcard would have been bulldozed in the 1960’s during the construction of the Oakland City Center.
Look at this postcard from 1914 you can see a brand-new Westlake Building but no Jack London Oak or Key Route. Look how charmingly compact and low-profile everything is!
Fun Oakland Fact! According to this Mechanix Illustrated article from 1956, the original loan to build the Jolly Trolly at Children’s Fairyland came from The Oakland Bank of Commerce. The first thematic amusement park in the United States, Children’s Fairyland is an enduring East Bay landmark and one of the inspirations for Disneyland.
Considering the Jolly Trolly and Children’s Fairyland is is still rolling strong almost sixty years later, that’s a lot of merry dollars indeed.
Francis says he will never forget his sense of elation when the bank said “yes” to his unique idea for this miniature gas-powered ride for small fry. In fact, he ended up packing so much whimsy and charm in his colorful creation that even the parents of the youngsters who ride his train became enchanted with the Jolly Trolly, making it one of the major attractions in Oakland’s Children’s Fairyland.
Francis, who left a secure job with eight-and-one-half years’ seniority on the police force now has a brand-new patent, issued in August 1956, on his appealing trolly.
According to office lore, the last bank to occupy our space was Wells Fargo but I couldn’t find any information on later tenants — banks or otherwise. With Google failing, perhaps the next stop is the Oakland Library…
