AKA: Royal Insurance Company Office Building #1, Financial District, San Francisco, CA

Structure Type: built works - commercial buildings - office buildings

Designers: [unspecified]

Dates: [unspecified]

Pine Street and Sansome Street
Financial District, San Francisco, CA 94104

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The Royal Insurance Building #1 stood on the northwest corner of Pine and Sansome Streets.

Overview

Headquartered in Liverpool, England, the Royal Insurance Company maintained this office in San Francisco, CA, c. 1900. In that year, Rolla V. Watt was the company's local manager. (See Crocker-Langley Directory of San Francisco, California, 1900, p. 1495.) The Royal Insurance Company was one of the largest British fire insurers of the late nineteenth century, along with the Liverpool-based Liverpool and London Insurance Company, and the Glasgow-based North British Insurance Company. According to the book,Business Life and Public Policy: Essays in Honour of D. C. Coleman, "At this point [1869] two of the four largest British fire insurers were Liverpool companies. Their exploits in promoting the enormous insurance trade in the U.S.A. were far more dashing than anything achieved in London; the Royal, the Liverpool and London and the [Glasgow-based] North British were the first British companies to create American agencies in the revival of insurance exports around the mid-century." (SeeBusiness Life and Public Policy: Essays in Honour of D. C. Coleman, Neil McKendrick and R. B. Outhwaite, eds., [Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986], p. 144.)

Demolition

The Royal Insurance Company's San Francisco office was ruined in the Great Earthquake and Fire of 04/18/1906.

PCAD id: 12033