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Finance History | Wells Fargo — The Two-Story Brick at 424 Montgomery
· 1852-7
Personal memoryBy kevin · · updated · Report an issue
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Finance History | Wells Fargo — The Two-Story Brick at 424 Montgomery
kevin
7/13/1852
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People treat Wells Fargo as a stagecoach logo that arrived already spanning the West.
The first California bank book was opened here, on Montgomery Street, on 13 July 1852.
Henry Wells and William G. Fargo had formed American Express in 1850. When that board refused to stretch the network to the Pacific, they chartered a separate firm in New York on 18 March 1852 and sent agents west.
Samuel P. Carter ran express. Reuben W. Washburn ran banking. They took a tidy two-story brick building at 424 Montgomery Street, on the east side of the street just north of California, and combined both trades under one roof.
That combination was the mechanism. Gold-rush merchants needed a house that would buy dust, hold deposits, and move coin and paper on the same ledger as letters and parcels. Separate express companies and separate banks left a gap between the mine and the counting house. Wells, Fargo & Co. closed it.
The firm lasted at these small quarters only until 1855. It then moved along the same block, including into the granite Parrott Building at Montgomery and California after Adams & Company failed in the 1855 panic.
A bronze marker now stands near 420 Montgomery Street, the long headquarters and former History Museum address, reading that Wells, Fargo & Co. first opened near this site on 13 July 1852. The 1852 brick itself is gone. The block is still the Financial District.
The Sacramento office opened the same day, at Second and J Streets in the B.F. Hastings building. The San Francisco pin is the first bank transaction on the Coast.
The museum that later occupied 420 Montgomery closed on 28 February 2025 when the bank prepared to leave the tower. The street still carries the founding address.
Photo: period view of a Wells Fargo express office and the Montgomery Street fabric, via Wikimedia Commons. The 1852 two-story brick was not preserved as a standing bank.
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