First National Bank of San Juan Bautista
Antoine Taix built this sandstone building along with 307 Third Street one year after the 1867 downtown fire. The first in a series of four sandstone buildings on the main commercial street of San Juan Bautista, 303 was the second in sequence of construction and was first operated as a butcher shop. Taix also owned several other commercial properties along Third Street. He was born in France, arrived in San Francisco in 1871 and came to Monterey County because of ill health where he eventually settled in San Juan Bautista. In addition to his commercial involvement, Taix was also a San Juan Bautista mayor and a bank director.
By the 1900s, the building had been used as a drug store, the Pick Hardware Co. operated under the ownership of Pearce and Abbe, and then a shoe repair store. The First National Bank opened in the building in 1919 as an independent operation sponsored by the Bank of Italy under A.P. Giannini, who founded the Bank of America. Local stockholders calling themselves the A.P. Giannini Club bought nearly half the initial stock offering. The first depositor fell to six-year-old Joe Cravea Jr., son of local shoe store owners Mr. and Mrs. Joe Cravea Sr. While young Joe’s coins were being counted, another clerk completed the first deposit for Frank B. Abbe.
When the building became the Bank of America, its exterior was remodeled with the current Neoclassical details. The building is a one-story rectangular sandstone commercial building on a sandstone foundation with a flat roof decorated with two courses of Spanish type tiles evoking a Mission style. Two contemporary gaslight patterned lamps project outward on each side of the entrance. Faced with concrete, the sandstone is dressed as cut stone. Its detailing is a mixture of neoclassic and Spanish Mission.
After the bank vacated the building in the 1960’s, it then housed the Rabbit Tree shop, and later was an extension of the well known Cutting Horse Restaurant next door. It has since been used as a variety of antique and retail stores.
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