REPOST
Amedeo Giannini was born on May 6, 1870 and raised in San Jose, California on a fruit and vegetable farm. He dropped out of college to take a full time job as a produce broker for the Santa Clara Valley. After marrying the daughter of a San Francisco real estate mogul, he became a full time manager of his father-in-law’s estate and a director at Columbus Savings and Loan. In 1904, when Giannini’s fellow directors disagreed with his idea of opening Columbus Savings beyond just the wealthy, he opened Bank of Italy in a rented saloon in North Beach[1]. Bank of Italy was one of the first banks in the naition to open its doors to the middle working class.
When the 1906 Earthquake and Fires[2] happened, Giannini was able to transport all of the banks’ holdings to his private residence eighteen miles via a garbage wagon before his bank building, now located on Columbus, burned to the ground. The fires crippled many of the City’s bigger banks, as it took weeks before bank vaults were cool enough to open. Giannini quickly took advantage of the situation by setting up an “office”, comprised of a plank placed across two barrels, on the sidewalk outside the ruins of his building. He took deposits and provided loans formalized with a handshake. Giannini would later claim that every last one of these loans was repaid. Giannini moved his bank to the eight story building at 550 Montgomery (today known as the Clay-Montgomery Building). Giannini was the first to predict that the City would “rise from the ashes”, a theme that repeats itself throughout San Francisco history.
In 1929 Bank of Italy merged with the smaller Bank of America in Los Angeles, and the name of these merged banks officially changed to Bank of America (“BofA”) a year later. BofA grew to become the world’s largest transnational commercial bank. Giannini retired in 1945 and died four years later[3].
In 1969 Bank of America’s world headquarters were moved to its new building at 555 California. At 52 stories, it was the tallest building west of the Mississippi until the completion of the Transamerica Building in 1972[4]. Today the BofA Building is the fourth tallest building on the San Francisco skyline. It’s irregular cutouts near its crown are meant to reflect the Sierra Nevada mountains. The large plaza at its entrance is named after Giannini, and in prominent view is a 200 ton black Swedish granite sculpture entitled Transcendence, but which most people refer to as “the Banker’s Black Heart”.
Bank of America’s world headquarters remained at 555 California until 1998 when BofA merged with NationsBank. BofA moved out of their building and it was sold. Today the building is officially called 555 California, but most longtime San Francisco residents will always refer to the brown skyscraper as the BofA.
