Montgomery Block

The Montgomery Block, once known as Halleck’s Folly, stood at six hundred twenty-eight Montgomery Street as a four-story brick fortress built upon a foundation of crisscrossed redwood logs. Completed in eighteen fifty-three, it was the largest and most expensive office building west of the Mississippi River, designed by architect G. P. Cummings for Henry Wager Halleck. Because it relied on this unusual, sinking-averse log base to hold its weight in the mud of the original shoreline, critics doubted its stability, though its iron-framed walls and shutters made it the first fireproof structure in the city.