Whose Town Is It Anyway?

By Mark Coggins
Raymond Chandler, who along with Dashiell Hammett perfected the American hard-boiled detective story, is best known for his well-regarded novels set in Los Angeles, The Big Sleep (1939) and The Long Goodbye (1953) among them. Hammett, on the other hand, made his bones with the masterworks he wrote and set in San Francisco, The Maltese Falcon (1930) being the most famous.

Given the close association of Chandler with L.A. and Hammett with San Francisco, would you be surprised to learn that Chandler lived and worked in “the city that knows how” before Hammett? It’s true.

Upon Chandler’s return to the United States, following his service with the Canadian Army in France during World War I, he lived in San Francisco in 1919 and worked briefly at two banks—the Anglo and London Paris National Bank and the Bank of British North America. That predates Hammett’s arrival in town by two years.

(Above) Anglo and London Paris National Bank building in 1981.

While researching Chandler’s time in San Francisco, I learned that the Bank of British North America was apparently located at 221 Sansome Street, though I can’t find confirmation of that in the 1919 City Directory. (The property now contains a 7-Eleven store.) I more readily discovered the location of the Anglo and London Paris National Bank, not far away at the intersection of Sutter and Sansome streets. This is currently the home of One Sansome Street, a 42-story office tower, and it turns out that the conservatory of the new building is actually the façade of the old Anglo and London structure (built in 1910). The original cornice and columned archways, in particular, were preserved to bound the glass-roofed courtyard/conservatory.

Given the Anglo and London’s status as “historically significant,” the developers were required to preserve more than just the building’s granite-clad façade prior to breaking ground for the new skyscraper back in the early 1980s. They documented the appearance and design of the former bank as completely as possible, and the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) of the Library of Congress retains that documentation, including original blueprints and photographs taken before demolition.

The accompanying report provides background on the structure’s prolific Mexican-born American designer:

The Anglo and London Paris National Bank was designed by Albert Pissis in 1908 … He was among the chief exponents of what was then called “modern architecture” with its structure derived from the new-invented steel frame, and its imagery inspired by the buildings of ancient Rome and Renaissance …

Many of Pissis’ most noted works survive in San Francisco. The Emporium (835-865 Market Street) and the James Flood Building (870-898 Market Street) were his two largest commissions.

Since the publication of that HABS report, the Emporium (erected originally in 1896, but rebuilt in 1908 after the city’s great earthquake and fire) has been razed to make room for a one-million-square-foot addition to the San Francisco Centre. Yet a portion of Pissis’ work survives once more. The building’s dome was retained to cap the new structure through an impressive feat of hydraulic engineering.

(Right) Flood Building, photo by Mark Coggins.

Just across Market Street, Pissis’ other large commission—the Flood Building—stands today looking much as it did in 1904 when it opened. One of the early tenants of the building was the Pinkerton National Detective Agency. And one of the employees of that agency was none other than Dashiell Hammett. In 1915 he had joined “the Pinks” as a clerk, working first in his hometown of Baltimore, Maryland, and later being assigned to the San Francisco office.

All of which leads us to a hard-boiled epiphany: Hammett and Chandler, the two masters of the American detective story, both worked in San Francisco buildings designed by Albert Pissis!

I’ll leave you with a shot of the interior of the Anglo and London Bank. Can you imagine Raymond Chandler there in 1919 waiting for you behind the teller window as you rush in to deposit your weekly paycheck? Maybe he’d greet you with one of his famous Chandlerisms:

“If you’re looking for trouble, I come from where they make it.”

Interior of the Anglo and London Paris National Bank building.