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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 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