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Overview

Architect Henry A. Minton (1883-1948), designed this large office building for A.P. Giannni's Bank of Italy in the mid-1920s. From 1926 until 1970, it stood as the tallest building between San Francisco and Los Angeles at 14 stories. The building had a Mediterranean Revival character, its lines adapted from Italian palazzi. It had a somewhat oddly-scaled cupola on top, that did not altogether fit the style or size of the skyscraper.

Building History

Henry Anthony Minton, Sr., (1883-1948), worked as a consultant for the Bank of Italy in the 1920s, designing many banks for the rapidly expanding firm. He wrote in a Harvard University alumni publication in 1928: "For the past five years much of my work has been a struggle to keep the architectural development of the Bank of Italy abreast of its phenomenal growth as a bank. It can’t be done easily or simply with a bank having some three hundred branches scattered all over a state like California; but the effort is well worth making and the cooperation given by the bank personnel from the president down is a real satisfaction.” (See Harvard College—Class of 1903, Records of the Class 1903-1928, [Norwood, Mass. : Privately printed for the class by the Plimpton Press,1928], pp. 683-684.). Minton's practice also entailed a great deal of work for the Catholic Church in the Bay Area.

The Bank of Italy changed its name to the more universal "Bank of America" on 11/01/1930. (See US Department of the Treasury, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.gov, “Bank of America: The Humble Beginnings of a Large Bank,” accessed 04/02/2020.)