Crocker National Bank
Encyclopedia
Crocker National Bank was a United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 bank
Bank
A bank is a financial institution that serves as a financial intermediary. The term "bank" may refer to one of several related types of entities:...

 headquartered in San Francisco, California. It was acquired by and merged into Wells Fargo Bank in 1986.

History

The bank traces its history to the Woolworth National Bank in San Francisco. Charles Crocker
Charles Crocker
Charles Crocker was an American railroad executive.-Early years:Crocker was born in Troy, New York, to a modest family and moved to an Indiana farm at age 14. He soon became independent, working on several farms, a sawmill, and at an iron forge. In 1845 he founded a small, independent iron...

, who was one of The Big Four of the Central Pacific Railroad
Central Pacific Railroad
The Central Pacific Railroad is the former name of the railroad network built between California and Utah, USA that formed part of the "First Transcontinental Railroad" in North America. It is now part of the Union Pacific Railroad. Many 19th century national proposals to build a transcontinental...

 and who constructed America's First Transcontinental Railroad
First Transcontinental Railroad
The First Transcontinental Railroad was a railroad line built in the United States of America between 1863 and 1869 by the Central Pacific Railroad of California and the Union Pacific Railroad that connected its statutory Eastern terminus at Council Bluffs, Iowa/Omaha, Nebraska The First...

, acquired a controlling interest in Woolworth for his son William Henry Crocker. The bank was renamed Crocker Woolworth National Bank, later Crocker-Anglo Bank, Crocker-Citizens National Bank, then Crocker First National Bank and finally Crocker National Bank. It had many branches, mostly in the northern half of California. In 1963, Crocker-Anglo Bank later merged with Los Angeles' Citizens National Bank, to become Crocker-Citizens Bank. and later, Crocker Bank.

On April 21, 1975, Emily Harris
Emily Harris (SLA)
Emily Harris was, along with her husband William Harris , a founding member of the Symbionese Liberation Army , a leftist United States group involved in bank robberies, kidnapping and murder. In the 1970s, she was convicted of kidnapping Patty Hearst...

, along with other members of the Symbionese Liberation Army
Symbionese Liberation Army
The Symbionese Liberation Army was an American self-styled left-wing urban militant group active between 1973 and 1975 that considered itself a revolutionary vanguard army...

 robbed the Carmichael, California
Carmichael, California
Carmichael is a census-designated place in Sacramento County, California, United States. It is part of the Sacramento–Arden-Arcade–Roseville Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 61,762 at the 2010 census, up from 49,742 at the 2000 census.-Geography and geology:Carmichael...

, branch of the Crocker Bank of $15,000. Harris shot and murdered customer Myrna Opsahl
Myrna Opsahl
Myrna Opsahl was a church worker, a mother of four, and a murder victim of the Symbionese Liberation Army. She died in April 1975 during a Carmichael, California, bank robbery...

 for responding too slowly to Harris' demand for everybody in the building to lie down on the ground.

In the 1970s and early 1980s, Crocker cultivated a reputation for customer service and convenience, including expanded hours. It was also one of the first California banks to offer automated teller machine
Automated teller machine
An automated teller machine or automatic teller machine, also known as a Cashpoint , cash machine or sometimes a hole in the wall in British English, is a computerised telecommunications device that provides the clients of a financial institution with access to financial transactions in a public...

 service; one early television commercial showed a young businessman confidently using the machine, while speaking to it as if it were a person; he was then followed by an elderly woman approaching it for the first time, and greeting it with a very uncertain "Hello."

Crocker National Bank was purchased by the British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 financial institution Midland Bank
Midland Bank
Midland Bank Plc was one of the Big Four banking groups in the United Kingdom for most of the 20th century. It is now part of HSBC. The bank was founded as the Birmingham and Midland Bank in Union Street, Birmingham, England in August 1836...

 in 1981, but after a series of financial losses it was sold on to Wells Fargo Bank in 1986. Crocker's president and over eighty vice presidents left the bank after the merger.

In the 1970s Crocker ran a television commercial featuring the song "We've Only Just Begun
We've Only Just Begun
"We've Only Just Begun" is the signature song of The Carpenters, written by Roger Nichols and Paul Williams , and is often used as a wedding song. The song was ranked at #405 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of "the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time".The song was recorded by Smokey Roberds, a friend...

," which was later rerecorded by The Carpenters
The Carpenters
Carpenters were an American vocal and instrumental duo, consisting of sister Karen and brother Richard Carpenter. The Carpenters were the #1 selling American music act of the 1970s. Though often referred to by the public as "The Carpenters", the duo's official name on authorized recordings and...

 and sold as a single: It became the duo's signature song. The ad showed a young married couple moving into their first house, financed by a mortgage from Crocker. Some of Crocker's customers were surprised that Crocker made mortgage loans.
Scott Adams
Scott Adams
Scott Raymond Adams is the American creator of the Dilbert comic strip and the author of several nonfiction works of satire, commentary, business, and general speculation....

 worked at Crocker during his first years in the business world. It is said to have inspired the evil Bank of Ethel in Adams' Dilbert
Dilbert
Dilbert is an American comic strip written and drawn by Scott Adams. First published on April 16, 1989, Dilbert is known for its satirical office humor about a white-collar, micromanaged office featuring the engineer Dilbert as the title character...

comic strip.

External links


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