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.
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
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