Added to the National Register of Historic Places on December 30, 1982

The old National Bank of Whittier Building cuts a fine figure in its beaux arts duds. Uptown Whittier’s stuffed with handsome storefronts dressed up in the architectural styles of yore, but this one projects an air of refinement, even importance. It’s the balanced proportions and all the terra cotta whirligigs on the facade that give it away – you don’t find such a profusion of egg & dart and fleur de lis patterns on just any building, or a double height main space with art glass transom windows, or a beautiful 19th century clock mounted on the corner, either. This was clearly built as A) a bank, B) a government building or C) an office tower.

It’s both A and C. This was built in 1923 as the new headquarters for the Bank of Whittier. The bank’s president at the time, Albert Hadley, was the son of its founder Washington Hadley, one of Whittier’s pioneering citizens. Since the late 1880s, when the Bank of Whittier took over from the failing Tellinghast and Henry bank, it had occupied a two-story brick building with a stylish corner turret, on the exact same site at the corner of Philadelphia Street & Greenleaf Avenue. After 35 years, with Whittier’s population steadily growing, the younger Hadley decided it was time to modernize. 

He couldn’t have chosen a better architecture duo than John & Donald Parkinson. The father and son team was perhaps the preeminent firm for institutional and corporate architecture at the time. In a five year span surrounding the construction of the National Bank of Whittier Building, they gave us the Security Trust Building in Hollywood, the LA Memorial Coliseum, multiple buildings on the USC campus, the Southern California Gas Company Complex downtown, the law school building and Bridge Hall at USC, and more. Later, they’d design Bullocks Wilshire, Union Station and the Title Guarantee and Trust Company Building. Too many classics to name. And in the 1920s, the double Parkinsons had perfected all the Renaissance revival tricks that fed into the neoclassical beaux arts style.

According to an August 1922 article in The Whittier News, the building was initially planned as another two-story creation, plus a basement that would hold three large vaults for cash, books and safety deposit boxes. The ground floor would contain directors’ rooms, a spacious lobby and room for 16 tellers, and upstairs would be 13 separate offices to be leased out. The builders were supposed to work on just one half of the building at a time, so that the bank employees would always have at least half a building to do business in. 

Just a couple months after that announcement, the Los Angeles Times reported that the contractors MacDonald & Driver had won the bid for a six-story bank, for $250,000. And then by December, the same paper said that plans had changed, and it was actually four stories, for $400,000. How it ended up as six stories for $414,000, I have no idea. But as a result, it held the distinction as Whittier’s tallest building for a good many years. In the aerial photo below, you can see it towering over the rest of the properties on Philadelphia Street at the top center. 

For this building’s first six decades, the bottom floor was always a bank, though the institution inside was known by many names. The National Bank of Whittier became First National Bank in the 1920s, then merged with Whittier Savings in 1928, was known for a while as the First National Trust and Savings Bank, and was then folded into the new Bank of America empire in early 1929. From then on, most articles referred to the building as the “Bank of America Building.” 

At the time of the Bank of America merger, First National Trust and Savings’ president, Fred. W. Hadley (the third generation of Hadleys to run a financial institution at the corner of Philadelphia & Greenleaf), focused on its role in the development of Whittier:  

We have watched Whittier grow from a small village into a community of metropolitan proportions, and it has been our privilege to write much of the history of this progress into the records of the First National…The First National Bank is a local institution in history, spirit and management. Our hearts and homes are here. It is particularly gratifying to us, therefore, that the affiliation with the Bank of America opens to us new and wider avenues of constructive service to our neighbors and to our community.

-Fred W. Hadley, President of First National Trust and Savings Bank, quoted in The Whittier News, January 12, 1929

Throughout its history, a whole variety of professional types slid their hands up the brass and cast iron stair railings, or took the manually operated elevator up to their office on the upper floors. Ads from the 1920s and ‘30s show physicians, surgeons, dentists, attorneys, real estate brokers and a credit bureau. There’s a story from 1930 of a naked man who escaped the Norwalk State Hospital and was taken (clothed) to a constable’s office in the Bank of America building. These days there’s a similar assortment of professionals up there. Contractors, jewelers, travel agents, tax prep services and multiple law firms all stalk floors two through six.

But without a doubt the most famous tenant was future president Richard Nixon. Tricky Dick grew up in Whittier from the age of nine, attended Whittier High School and then Whittier College, where he was elected student body president. After graduating from Duke Law School on scholarship in 1937, Nixon came back to his hometown and joined the firm of Wingert & Bewley, headquartered at the Bank of America Building since 1923. An interesting historical coincidence gleaned from a 1937 Whittier News article: Nixon’s grandpa Frank Milhous was business partners with his boss Mr. Bewley’s grandfather back in Indiana. 

After a couple years of working on wills, divorce and property cases, Nixon worked his way up to partner by 1939, and even opened up a second office for the firm in La Habra. He stayed with Wingert, Bewley & Nixon until 1942, when he moved to Washington DC to work for the Office of Price Administration; the firm kept its offices at the Bank of America Building until 1965. There’s a plaque in the sidewalk out front acknowledging Nixon’s professional life here, and another one on the facade, emblazoned with the phrase “Nixon Plaza” – the building’s official name since it was purchased by STC Management in 2014. Curious what his office looked like? There’s a replica of it at the Whittier Museum, complete with a smirking Richard Nixon dummy, pen in hand, probably thinking about historic architecture. 

There’s another connection between Nixon and this building. One of the catalysts for his political career was Herman Perry, a family friend and the manager of the Bank of America that was downstairs from the main Wingert & Bewley office. In the mid-’40s, Perry and a group of local Republicans formed the “Committee of 100,” tasked with finding a candidate to defeat Democratic congressman Jerry Voorhis, who’d won the last five elections. Perry pitched Nixon on running for Congress, Nixon enthusiastically agreed, and in 1947 he beat Voorhis – his first political victory.

Around 2011, the section of the sixth floor where Nixon used to work was turned into some kind of hidden AT&T cell tower situation. I imagine it as the latest salvo in a decades-long beef between Nixon and AT&T, dating back to 1970, when the Nixon administration’s Office of Telecommunications Policy broke up the monopoly that AT&T had over phone service at the time. The feud continued in 1989, when AT&T sponsored a TV movie called The Final Days, based on the aftermath of the Watergate scandal; Nixon objected to his portrayal, and in retaliation he switched his personal phone service from AT&T to MCI. 

The 1987 Whittier Narrows earthquake did extensive damage to uptown Whittier, where 342 homes were condemned as unsafe. The structure just one lot east of the Bank of America Building (where the outdoor patio is now) had to be demolished. Thankfully the reinforced concrete Bank of America Building withstood the quake, and its historic clock, jostled and broken during the shaking, was repaired thanks to donations from the locals. 

By that time, Bank of America was long gone. While small businesses continued to work out of the upper floors, there were a couple decades there without a lasting anchor tenant for the bottom floor. Q’s Billiard Club took a shot in 1995. Then another billiards spot called Stixx. A steak restaurant took over in 2000, but lost its liquor license due to noise and security complaints, and closed soon after. Then a furniture store moved in…and moved out before too long. 

When STC Management purchased the building in 2014, they initially hoped to lure The Cheesecake Factory to the bottom floor. Thankfully that didn’t happen, and instead the beloved restaurateur Ricardo Diaz – the wildly creative chef behind Guisados, Cook’s Tortas, Bizarra Capital and more – signed a 15-year lease for the space in 2017. Diaz created a food hall called Poet Gardens, with his own Whittier Brewing Company as the flagship, surrounded by a collection of food stalls. While there’s been plenty of business turnover since, the stalls are currently full, and the place was bumping when I visited on an early Saturday evening. 

Vendors were slinging pizza, BBQ, ice cream and baked goods, in addition to the solid pours coming from the brewery taps; a band played outside for customers lounging on the patio. Voices echoed throughout that double-height main room, where bank tellers once counted out cash for Whittier locals. 

The day I visited happened to be No Kings Day, a nationwide day of protests against the Trump administration’s increasingly authoritarian policies. Protesters marched down Philadelphia and Greenleaf with handmade signs; cars honked nonstop as they drove by the Bank of America building. The coincidence wasn’t lost on me that here I was, drinking beer inside the building where one of America’s most controversial presidents once worked, while outside throngs of Whittierites yelled slogans against one of our most divisive presidents (Trump and Nixon were penpals in the 1980s btw). It was a reminder that historic buildings can continue to be important centers of economic, cultural and political life within their communities, even more than a century after they’re built.

Sources & Recommend Reading

+ Aitken, Jonathan: Nixon: A Life (Regnery History, 1993 – via Internet Archive)

+ Archer, Maresa: “LA HABRA : Razing of Nixon’s Law Office Begins” (Los Angeles Times, October 22, 1992)

+ Associated Press: “ Trump and Nixon were pen pals in the ‘80s. Here are their letters.” (politico.com, September 23, 2020)

+ “Bank Building” (Los Angeles Times, October 15, 1922 – via Newspapers.com)

+ “Bank Home to Be Class A Building” ( Whittier News, August 15, 1922 – via Newspapers.com)

+ Carter, Paul: “Nixonville, Part 5 – Tour Stop #14, 15844 Whittier Boulevard” (richardnixonsocal.com, January 25, 2023)

+ “Change Plans” (Los Angeles Times, December 3, 1922 – via Newspapers.com)

+ Durflinger, Keith: “Historic Whittier Bank Building Was President Nixon’s Law Office at One Time” (Whittier Daily News, September 16, 2012)

+ “Festival Poster Showcases Historic Clock” (Los Angeles Times, July 9, 1992 – via ProQuest)

+ Fulton, Mary: “SIX MONTHS AFTER THE QUAKE: Piecing Together Shattered Lives” (Los Angeles Times, March 31, 1988 – via ProQuest)

+ Gee, Stephen: Iconic Vision: John Parkinson, Architect of Los Angeles (Angel City Press, 2013)

+ Hall, Jane: “AT&T; the Wrong Choice for Nixon” (Los Angeles Times, September 23, 1989)

+ Hidalgo, Melissa Mora: “Everything We Know About Ricardo Diaz’s Whittier Brewing Company and His Seven Food Stalls at Poet Gardens Opening This Fall, the L.A. Taco Exclusive” (LA Taco, September 16, 2019)

+ Hightower, Steven, Westcap Financial Group: National Bank of Whittier’s NRHP nomination form

+ “History of Bewley, Lassleben & Miller” (bewleylaw.com)

+ “History of Uptown Whittier District” (UWIA.org)

+ Kudler, Adrian Glick: “Richard Nixon’s First Whittier Law Office Now a Cell Tower” (Curbed Los Angeles, August 3, 2011)

+ “Local Bank Will Join Chain on January 14” (Whittier News, January 12, 1929 – via Newspapers.com)

+ McGroarty, John Steven, Ed.: History of Los Angeles County (The American Historical Society,  Inc., 1923 – via archive.org)

+ Molina, Sandra T: ”Local chef Ricardo Diaz to open brewery in Uptown Whittier’s former Bank of America building” (Whittier Daily News, April 5, 2017 – via ProQuest)

+ “National Bank of Whittier Building” (LAConservancy.org) 

+ “New Member in Law Firm” (Whittier News, November 18, 1937 – via Newspapers.com)

+ “News Professional Directory” (Whittier News, January 7, 1928 – via Newspapers.com)

+ “Quaker City to Have New Financial Structure” (Los Angeles Times, January 7, 1923 – via ProQuest)

+ “Richard Milhous Nixon: Whittier’s President” (PDF – Whittier Historical Society, 2018)

+ “Richard Nixon Elected Head of 20-30 Club” (Whittier News, June 7, 1939 – via Newspapers.com)

+ “Richard Nixon’s Two First Law Offices” (NixonFoundation.org, August 29, 2013)

+ Sprague, Mike: “Former Bank Building to Be Sold” (Los Angeles Daily News, August 8, 2006)

+ “U.S. Presidents Who Lived Among Us” (© 1998-2025 Given Place Media, publishing as Los Angeles Almanac, 2 Jan. 2019 

+ Whittier Community Development: “A Brief History of Whittier to 1970” (cityofwhittier.org)