Soo much in the City!

Bustling with Skyscrapers, business, people, food, history and so much more it is a place that you have to see to believe. The trip to San Francisco this Thursday was phenomenal. The city of San Francisco is beautiful from Old St.Marys church to the Crocker Center and One Rincon Hill South Tower. The city truly does have something for everyone with the past, present, and future right before your eyes. The city is culturally rich with places like Chinatown, Little Italy and the city's financial district all within walking distance from each other.

 On the tour everything amazed me however; the places that truly caught my eye were the Crocker Center and the Wells Fargo Bank. This building was originally created in 1908 by Willis Polk. One side of the building contained a rooftop garden that overlooked the financial district and the smallest preserved building in the city. In its original state the building contained an additional ten stories. However, the upper ten stories were eventually destroyed and the garden now serves as a POPO (privately owned public space). Below the distinct roof top garden is the Wells Fargo Bank. As I stepped out of the elevator I noticed that the vault was heavily decorated and later learned that all of the decorations on the vault door were only for appearance. When the vault was used to keep people's money the decorations made people feel as though their money was safe.  As we turned to walk up the stairs there was a carving of a squirrel at the base of the stair case. The sight of a squirrel holding a nut in its hand in the setting of a bank was quite humorous. I later learned that the squirrel also had meaning. The symbol of the squirrel was used to encourage people to save their money just like squirrels collect and save their food. Our tour guide Rick Evens told us that the irony of this is that squirrels only have a ten minute memory and I could not help but laugh. As we approached the second floor of the bank the main entrance, the floor was also heavily decorated with colors of gold and beautiful tile patterns below my feet. Again there were symbols and carvings of animals. I learned that the symbol of the griffin represented protection of the money. There were symbols of griffins everywhere. The information struck me by surprise because I thought that griffins were bad. As we walked inside the bank I saw that the bank had colors of gold in the ceiling and there were no walls. Everything was out in the open and this was done to show the customers that the people keeping the money were honest.  The transparent layout of the bank also ensured people that there was no one counting money behind closed doors reiterating the idea of honesty. I also saw that there was a top section in the bank elevated above everything else and that section is where the boss would sit. As we were leaving the bank there was one more stop where we observed the hand painted ceiling and the elevator captain's foot print. The building was a piece of artwork literally from top to bottom. The hand painted ceiling had colors of gold, red and, earth green. The room also had bohemian inspiration with golden chandeliers and tile imported from Italy. The room was created perfect and the only flaw was the best part. The foot print that was created by the elevator captain, he did the same job for fifty years in the same spot. Pretty amazing! Sadly however, Rick explained that places such as the bank would not be kept around 50 years from now.  People just don't hold value in places such as the banks and with everything going viral there is less need to keep places such as the Well Fargo Bank.  Despite that unfortunate fact it was awesome to see the city in a light that I had never seen before.

 It was also great because there is so much you can learn within such a small radius. Until Thursday I did not know what a cornice was or that the city even had a place called One Rincon Hill South Tower. I have a new found appreciation for the city of San Francisco. The knowledge I gained I haven't stopped telling my family and friends about. San Francisco is innovative and sets the standard for cities across America.

 Ironically in today’s Sacramento Bee, the City of the Vatican is having problems taking ATM and credit cards.  It is interesting that we saw the history of a bank in San Francisco up close and now the city that we have come to learn more about is having problems and may only accept cash for now.  Wow!

Taylor Mitchell