HIS BANK BURNED. HE OPENED FIRST.

April 18, 1906. San Francisco is burning, and the big banks cannot even open their vaults. A 35-year-old former produce dealer loads his small bank's money into two wagons, covers it with fruit and vegetables, and gets it out of the city. Within days he is lending again, from a plank on the waterfront. This is the story of Amadeo Peter Giannini, the founder of the Bank of Italy, which became Bank of America: a boy whose father was killed over a dollar or two, a produce trader who retired at 31 because "more money than he needs" makes a man a slave, a bank board that refused small loans, the great earthquake and fire, a Wall Street successor who tried to take his company apart, and the fight he won back at sixty-one. Chapters 0:00 San Francisco is burning 0:58 What his bank became 1:16 San Jose, 1870 2:32 The produce boy 3:52 The board that said no 5:35 April 18, 1906 8:59 One bank, many offices 12:06 The man from Wall Street 14:38 A bridge and the biggest bank 16:45 "No." 18:27 What he left 19:26 The wharf, 1906 Who was the first person in your life to say yes, when everyone else said wait until November? Tell me in the comments. Sources National Park Service, National Historic Landmark nomination of the Bank of Italy Building, 552 Montgomery St. (1977) San Francisco Chronicle, A.P. Giannini obituary (June 1949), as quoted by Peter Hartlaub, SF Chronicle (2015) Fortune, "World's Biggest Bank" (July 1947) Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, "Bank of America: The Humble Beginnings of a Large Bank" International Directory of Company Histories: BankAmerica Corporation; Transamerica Corporation Encyclopedia of World Biography and Gale Encyclopedia of U.S. Economic History: A.P. Giannini Golden Gate Bridge Highway and Transportation District, "Bond Measure Passes" Transamerica Corp. v. Board of Governors, 206 F.2d 163 (3d Cir. 1953) USGS, the 1906 San Francisco earthquake; Wells Fargo history archive Bank of America, second-quarter 2026 results Some details of 1906 (the oranges, the plank on two barrels, the exact day he reopened) are known mainly from Giannini's own later telling. Where sources disagree, the video says so. Images Archive photographs: San Francisco Public Library (Bank of Italy ruins 1906, Bank of Italy c.1908, wedding portrait 1892, Front Street c.1894, Ferry Building 1928, Columbus branch 1929, Pearl Harbor 1949 - U.S. Navy), California Historical Society via Calisphere, Library of Congress (Harris & Ewing, Bain), Bibliotheque nationale de France (Agence Rol), California State Library, National Archives, Arnold Genthe, George R. Lawrence, Edith Irvine (BYU), Eadweard Muybridge, SMU Libraries, NYPL. All public domain, via Wikimedia Commons or the archives named. Creative Commons images (author, license): CC BY-SA 4.0: BrokenSphere (Bank of Italy Building, 552 Montgomery St.) CC0: Daderot (Bank of America, Stockton St.), Bruck & Sohn Kunstverlag (San Mateo, 1906) License texts: creativecommons.org/licenses Images are color-graded, cropped and animated for this video. Some scenes use photographs of the same place within a few years of the moment described. Infographics and maps are original work of this channel. Voice-over is AI-generated. This channel is not affiliated with Bank of America or Transamerica. Brand names are used for identification only. #history #entrepreneur #documentary