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Overview

This Neo-Classical, three-story building operated as the first of three Merchants Exchange Buildings in San Francisco. This first Merchants Exchange occupied a site at Battery and Washington Streets, while the latter two stood at 465 Calitornia Street. The building served as the temporary State Capitol in CA from 01/24/1862 until 05/15/1862 while a flood inundated the Sacramento Capitol Building.

Building History

Disturnell's Strangers' Guide to San Francisco and Vicinity (1883) called this building the "Old Merchants' Exchange Building" and indicated it was located on the northeast corner of Washington and Battery Streets. (See W.C. Disturnell, Disturnell's Strangers' Guide to San Francisco and Vicinity, [San Francisco: W.C. Disturnell, Publisher, 1883], p. 56.)

Building Notes
The Mutual Life Insurance Company occupied Office #13 in the Merchants' Exchange Building in 1868. Charles E. McLane was the President of the company, with S.F. Butterworth, the Vice-President. Directors of the company included a who's who of local businessmen, including the Oakland banker Joseph Moravia Moss (1809-1880), sea captain Oliver Eldridge (1818-1902), head of the Sacramento Valley Railroad and San Francisco landowner Lester L. Robinson, President of the Hibernia Savings and Loan Society M.D. Sweeney, smelter Thomas H. Selby, investor and co-founder of the Donohoe-Kelly Banking Company, Joseph A. Donohoe, Sr. , and Comstock Lode millionaire William Sharon (1821-1885). (See the Mutual Life Insurance Company advertisement, Sacramento Daily Union, vol. 35, no. 5372, 06/15/1868, p. 4.)

PCAD id: 20333