For 100 years it has been the centerpiece of Fresno's skyline. It's arguably the city's most recognizable landmark, a hi-rise tribute to Fresno's boom years in the Roaring 20s. The story of the Pacific Southwest Building, today on KVPR's Central Valley Roots.
Plans were already underway for the 15-story tower when LA's Pacific Southwest Trust and Savings Bank took over Fresno-based Fidelity Trust in 1922. The building was the brainchild of Fresno lawyer, banker, raisin company executive and politician, William A. Sutherland.
Sutherland hired Fresno's R.F. Felchlin company to design the new building. His instruction to architects Charles Franklin and Raymond Shaw was to create a monumental building that would be surpassed by no other bank on the west coast.
The building is located at Fulton and Mariposa Streets, like a compass point for the whole city, it’s visible for miles down both Blackstone Avenue and Cesar Chavez Boulevard.
The bottom of the tower’s steel and concrete frame is clad in tall Corinthian columns and cast terra cotta ornamentation. The ground floor includes a massive banking hall with an ornate 40 foot coffered ceiling. The tower's midsection is clad in brown brick, and unlike Fresno’s other tall buildings of the era, the tower is decorated with full facades on all four sides.
The penthouse floors are stepped back from the main tower’s walls, with a balcony, toped by a pyramid-shaped roof, clad in terra cotta tiles. Today a radio tower sits on top. Originally a spire capped by an illuminated beacon gave weather forecasts for farmers throughout the county. The Pacific Southwest Building was reportedly the most expensive building built in California between 1920 and 1930.
