Pacific Coast Stock Exchange (1929)

This was built in 1915 as the U.S. Subtreasury Building, which moved here from 608 Commercial. When Miller and Pflueger reworked it for the Stock Exchange in 1930, they kept the Doric colonade but slightly raised the height of the corners where the fine sculptural groups by Ralph Stackpole are standing. The adjoining Art Deco-style Stock Exchange Club (now the City Club) on Sansome Street was an addition. Its lobby of red and green Italian marbles is spectacular, and the clubrooms contain artwork by Diego Rivera, Robert Boardman Howard, and Michael Goodman.

301 Pine Street and 155 Sansome Street

Miller and Pflueger, architects

Royal Insurance Company Building (1907)

A New York Firm designed this building for an insurance company headquartered in Liverpool, England. The first story is white marble with extremely fine carving around the entrance. The lion and unicorn above the entry was the company logo. The shaft is red brick with terra-cotta trim; the top of the building is two stories of cream terra-cotta with a double row of cornices and huge shields between paired windows, all topped by a balustrade.

201 Sansome Street
Howells and stokes, architects

Balfour Building (1920)

Built for a major shipper (like the Robert Dollar Building) - Balfour Guthrie & Co- and eventually came under Dollar ownership. It is richly clad in carved marble and variegated orange brick.

351 California
George Kelham, Architect

Robert Dollar Building (1919)

Built as headquarters for the Dollar Steamship Line, the terra-cotta cladding is ornamented with maritime imagery along with restrained Gothic details.

311 California Street

Charles McCall, Architect

Tadich Grill (1909)

This modest two-story building is rich in green terra-cotta and sheet copper detailing. Classical pediments surmount each entrance.

240 California Street

Ralph Warner Hart, architect

Bank of Italy (1908)

This was the first permanent home of A.P Gianni's Bank of Italy (later Bank of America). The building features a heavily rusticated classicism, with a first story of carved granite. The suptuous lobby is made of plaster and marble. Founed in 1904, the bank thrived because Giannini reached out to blue collar Italian laborers, which other Italian Banks refused to do. The Bank of Italy ended up absorbing all of the other Italian banks and many others. By the 1970's, it was the world's largest bank.

550 Montgomery Street
Shea and Lofquist, architects

Hobart Building

The reinforced concrete building, with its exuberant Renaissance and Baroque detailing, remains a landmark on a highly visible site, an oddly shaped building on an oddly shaped lot. An idiosyncratic seve-story oval tower sits atop a twenty-nine story base. Seen from afar, the hip-roofed attic looks like a palazzo in the sky. One of San Francisco's ost important and influential architects, Polk (1867-1924) thought the Hobart was one of his best designs and had his office there for years.