Best of S.F.’s past prepared for future
my mind’s eye, I see my grandfather, an old San Francisco gentleman in a carefully brushed, dark suit, heading downtown on the cable car to the main branch office of Hibernia Bank at Jones and Market streets.
He was an old-time San Franciscan, and proud of it, and that bank was his idea of a San Francisco institution. The building at Jones and Market was the headquarters of the Hibernia Bank and looked it, with soaring granite columns framing its entrance, a copper dome turned green with time, a lobby glistening with marble. There were tall, arched windows, and stained glass skylights, like a church. There were seven steel vaults, with walls 3 feet thick. It was a temple to the power of money, impressive, impregnable.
Albert Pissis, who was born in Mexico, was the architect who designed the building, an instant classic when it opened in 1892. The Hibernia Bank was Pissis’ masterpiece, and architect Willis Polk thought it was the most beautiful building in the city.
I banked there myself in the 1970s and ’80s before the days of the ATM and direct deposit. I liked the Hibernia. Despite its look of importance, it was a small, friendly bank. Hibernia had 35 branches and a nifty radio commercial: “When that other bank forgets your name, remember us. Hibernia.” But the bank was sold, and the old main office closed in 1985. By the turn of the 21st century, hardly anyone remembered Hibernia.
Within a few years of Hibernia’s demise, the neighborhood had gone bad, the nearby movie houses closed, and Jones and Market became the edge of the edgy Tenderloin. Except for the years when the police had a substation in the basement, the old building sat empty. After the cops moved out, someone put graffiti 4 feet high on its beautiful copper dome. Its windows were broken and pigeons lived in the grand banking hall.
But nothing stays the same, especially in cities. The tech boom brought new life to the neighborhood where Jones Street meets Market. Twitter moved in up the street. So did other tech firms. The old Hotel Renoir, across from the Hibernia Bank, is being rebuilt as a tourist hotel. It is a new day for the Mid-Market district.
The Dolmen Property Group bought the HiIn bernia Bank building in 2008 and spent several years and about $15 million restoring it — seismic work and an overhaul to bring it back to its former glory and to meet current city codes.
“It was not the kind of project you look at every day,” said Nigel Black, who was the manager for the overhaul. The building had good bones: under the grime and despite years of neglect, was the masterpiece Pissis designed.
Now the walls glow with new paint, the gilt-work has been restored, and sunlight streams through the stained glass windows. The old cages where the bank tellers stood have been removed, and the main bank lobby has been converted into an 8,000square-foot space, big enough for a ballroom in the palace of a grand duke.
The space was big enough to hold a rally for Hillary Clinton and for a tour by neighborhood residents this spring. Last week, members of San Francisco’s Victorian Alliance got a look at the building during the organization’s regular monthly meeting.
The building’s heyday as a bank was so long ago that most of the Victorian Alliance members had never been inside. They sipped wine, nibbled on cheese and admired a building straight out of late Victorian times. “It’s fabulous,” said Gene Gaenslen, a retired physician, who was seeing it for the first time.
The alliance members wanted to know about its future. It’s on the market, said Black, the project manager. Dolmen, the developer, is looking for tenants for offices, for retail, perhaps for an entertainment space, for special events. “Maybe a nightclub,” Black said.
There is no doubt this part of Market Street is on the way up: A half block down is a place that sells $15 cups of coffee. But on the street there is more stimulating stuff offered — drugs. It is not a place for an evening stroll — the city’s present problem and its hopeful future are right on the Hibernia bank’s doorstep.
“We have to find a balance,” said Jim War-shell, president of the Victorian Alliance. “I am optimistic.”
In his mind’s eye he sees a new Market Street. “It could be one of the proudest streets in the city,” he said.
That may be so, but the future and the past are still mixed up in the gritty present of this part of San Francisco.