The tower was built for the Bank of California, to house its Portland operations, which had outgrown their space in the historic Bank of California Building in which they had been based since 1925, located just over one block to the east. Construction began in 1967. The full-block site was previously occupied, in its southeast quadrant, by the Rosenblatt Building, which was built in 1889 and demolished in early 1967. Two theaters had occupied other portions of the block, the United Artists Theatre and the Liberty Theatre. The bank building was completed in late 1969, and the bank opened its offices in the new tower on December 8, 1969, vacating its 1925 building. The 15-story building was originally known as the Bank of California building, and informally as the Bank of California Tower. It was originally owned by the bank, but in 1972 a pending sale of the building to developer Harry Mittleman was reported. Mittleman completed the purchase in that year and moved into an office on the building's 15th floor. The 1972 sale included a leaseback agreement under which the Bank of California would lease the building for up to 35 years. In 1986, after Mittleman's death, the building was owned by his estate, but the "long-term master lease" was planned to be transferred from the Bank of California to a partnership of Melvin Mark Properties and Douglas Goodman in January 1987. The bank continued to be the building's primary tenant, leasing of the overall of space at that time. In April 1996, Bank of California merged with Union Bank to become Union Bank of California. The Portland building was renamed the Union Bank of California Buildingin September of that year. In 2008, The Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ acquired the 35 percent of Union Bank that it had not already owned, and Union Bank of California became MUFG Union Bank, which uses the branding "UnionBank". Subsequently, the Portland building became the UnionBank Tower. As of 2012, the building was owned by both Melvin Mark Companies and Downtown Development Group. In 2012, the owners turned a subbasement level into a fourth level of underground parking, increasing the number of parking spaces by 84 for a total of 339.
Description
The tower was designed by the firm of Anshen and Allen of San Francisco in the International Style, with a strong presence on Broadway. A distinctive feature of the Union Bank Tower are its exposed service cores, on the building's south and west sides, which are clad in light gray slate with a greenish tint. It is said that the slate was quarried from the same area in Wales as the stone used in Stonehenge. The building's interior design was led by Maria Bergson, of New York City.
