This classical building on the northwest corner of Hollywood Boulevard and Wilton Place was designed by architects Morgan, Walls and Clements for Security-First National Bank of Los Angles in 1929.

A permit for the structure was obtained in November 1929, less than 3 weeks after the Stock Market Crash had caused a major Panic and a run on banks, many of which collapsed. When plans for the bank’s new Hollywood branch were made public in December 1929, depositors must have felt doubly assured that their money was in safe hands and there was no need to withdraw it and hide it under the mattress.

Hollywood Daily Citizen 12/9/1929

Security-First National Bank had come to be in January 1929, the result of a merger between Security Trust and Savings Bank and Los Angeles-First National Bank.

Security Trust and Savings Bank itself had been created in December 1911 when investor Joseph Saroni’s Security Savings Bank consolidated with the Southwest Trust Company and Equitable Savings. Los Angeles-First National Trust and Savings Bank had merged with Pacific Southwest Trust and Savins Bank in February 1924.

LA Evening Express 3/7/1930

The new Hollywood branch opened at 5701 Hollywood Boulevard on March 8, 1930. It replaced its previous Hollywood branch at 5906 Hollywood Boulevard at Bronson, which had opened only a few years earlier, in 1924, as the Pacific-Southwest Trust and Savings Bank.

Hollywood Daily Citizen 10/17/1924

With such rapid changes, it’s a wonder customers could remember where their bank branch was located, let alone the name of the bank.

Practically every LA child was, or wanted to be, a card-carrying member of Security-First National Bank’s Hopalong Cassidy Savings Club, launched in March 1951, which could net you a letter from Hoppy, a Hoppy bank and other swag, plus coded messages that only members could decipher. On opening day, tellers wore Hoppy costumes but neither Hoppy nor Topper could appear. LA Daily News 3/14/1951.

In 1968, Security-First National Bank merged with Pacific National Bank of San Francisco and became known as Security Pacific National Bank.

The bank’s branch at 5701 Hollywood Boulevard became “Escrow Center” in 1973. The building is a lone survivor, its neighbor, the adjacent Ralphs Market (which also opened in 1930 having purchased the site from the bank) being long gone.

5701 Hollywood Boulevard at Wiltern in 2018. Google map image.

Notes:

In August 1991, after a series of bad overseas investments, Security Pacific National Bank merged with Bank of America and continued in business as Bank of America thereafter.