AKA: California Building, Financial District, San Francisco, CA

Structure Type: built works - commercial buildings - office buildings

Designers: Skidmore, Owings and Merrill (SOM), San Francisco, CA (firm); John Ogden Merrill (architect); Nathaniel Alexander Owings (architect); Louis Skidmore Sr. (architect)

Dates: constructed 1977

23 stories

310 Sansome Street
San Francisco, CA 94104-1335

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Alaska Commercial Building was located at Sansome Street, California Street, and Halleck Street; the street address of the Union Bank Building was 356 California Street in 2005;

In 2011, the Union Bank was owned completely by the Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG). The Union Bank was in 2011, the product of a complex chain of bank mergers. Part of its ancestry began in 1870, when Kaspare Cohn (b. 06/14/1839 in West Prussia) established the modestly-named Kaspare Cohn Commercial and Savings Bank in Los Angeles, CA, which renamed itself the Union Bank and Trust Company of Los Angeles in 1918. It then rechristened itself as "Union Bank" in 1958, and, later, the Union Bancorp. The Japanese institution, the Bank of Tokyo, Ltd, established an American entity, The Bank of Tokyo California (BOTC), in San Francisco, CA, in 1953. The Bank of Tokyo California purchased the 1st National Bank of San Diego in 1975, calling the new entity the "California First Bank"; California First then took over the Union Bancorp in 1988. Another financial forebearer was the Bank of California, begun in 1864. The Bank of California was, in turn bought by Mitsubishi Bank of Japan in 1984. In 1995, the Bank of California and the Union Bank joined together to form the UnionBanCal Corporation. The next year, the two giant Japanese banks, Mitsubishi Bank, Limited and the Bank of Tokyo, Limited, consolidated in April to create, for a time, the world's largest bank. This newly consolidated Japanese bank owned most shares of the Union Bank, N.A., through this complex series of financial deals. In 11/2008, the Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG) bought all shares it did not own of the UnionBanCal Corporation to give it complete control over Union Bank.

This Union Bank Building, a bland 23-story high-rise, was built on the site of the demolished 13-story Alaska Commercial Building.

PCAD id: 3911