Grant Avenue at Market Street – Financial District, San Francisco, California

The building with the classical pillars in front of it was built in 1910 to house the Savings Union Bank. This local landmark in Ecole des Beaux Arts style was modeled after the Pantheon in Rome. The designers and architects William Danforth Bliss and William Baker Faville, graduated from MIT and began their San Francisco practice in 1898. Until 1925 they were responsible for many distinguished homes and commercial buildings including the Bank of California, the Geary Theater, the St. Francis Hotel, the Southern Pacific Headquarters and Southern Pacific Depot, and several 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition buildings.

The Savings Union Trust Company building opened on Jan. 1, 1911, as home to the institution resulting from the 1910 merger of the Savings Union and Loan Society, incorporated in 1857, and the San Francisco Savings Union, the very first bank incorporated under California’s 1862 savings bank law. The merged bank quickly added a commercial department and then a trust department, resulting in the name "Savings Union Bank and Trust."

The bank building is of Ionic order, with a dome, an attic story, and a pediment supported by six massive Ionic columns. The 16x21x 8-1/2 foot high vault was constructed by the Bethlehem Steel Company of Harveyized nickel-steel, face-hardened steel plate; the main door of the vault weighed 23 tons, and the vault contained 5,063 safe deposit boxes. The building’s bronze doors featured panels designed by the noted California artist Arthur Mathews. The Savings Union Trust Bank Building now houses the retailer Emporio Armani, which includes a café with a marble bar and a store stocked with some of the Italian designer’s most expensive lines.