Merchants Exchange Building
- Architect
- Daniel Burnham
- Year
- 1904
- Style
- Beaux-Arts
- City
- San Francisco, CA
- Collection
- the city beautiful
The Merchants Exchange Building at 465 California Street is the third structure to house the Merchants Exchange, an association of city traders that dates back to a three-story brick building on Battery Street in 1855. The current fifteen-story skyscraper, designed by Daniel Burnham in the Beaux-Arts style, replaced an earlier three-story Beaux-Arts building on the same site and was completed in 1904.
the building
Watchmen on the roof. At the original 1855 Battery Street building, watchmen stationed on the roof would spot arriving ships and relay word down to merchants in the meeting room, who then rushed to the docks to meet them.
A tower built to watch ships. The Merchants Exchange's second home, a three-story Beaux-Arts building on California Street, sat farther inland than its predecessor, so it added an observation tower specifically to keep watch over incoming ships.
the style
The current building carries forward the Beaux-Arts style of its 1904 predecessor on the site, translated into a fifteen-story commercial tower rather than a low-rise clubhouse.
More on Beaux-Artsthe architect
Daniel Burnham, who designed the 1904 Merchants Exchange Building, was one of the historically significant American architects of his era.
nearby
- Commercial Union Assurance Building
- Italian American Bank
- 555 California Street
- Mills Building
- Russ Building
- Federal Reserve Bank Building