Photograph courtesy of the Los Gatos Library Collection
The building at the northeast corner of Santa Cruz Avenue and Main Street played a role in the banking life of Los Gatos. Today, it houses Twig, an arts and crafts boutique.
John W. Lyndon built the Theresa Block in 1880 and named it for his wife. Locally-owned Los Gatos Bank occupied the this two-story structure at the northeast corner of Santa Cruz Avenue and Main Street. It was owned by bankers S. D. Balch and J. A. Case from 1904 to 1926, when it was purchased by The Bank of Italy, soon to be known as Bank of America.
The B. of A. replaced the Theresa Block with its own building in 1931 and remained there until 1963, when a move was made to N. Santa Cruz and and Almendra avenues.
First National Bank Building, built in 1920 at l60 Main Street, today is the home of Valeriano's Ristorante.
It was Clarence Hamsher of Los Gatos First National Bank who collected and framed early local photographs displayed on the east interior wall. For 32 years the public enjoyed the photographs, which today hang in the reference department of the Los Gatos Town Library.
When Los Gatos First National was purchased by American Trust Co., and located at N. Santa Cruz Avenue and Royce Street, the Hamsher collection was donated to the Town Library.
The Theresa Block, with its brick construction and arched windows, resembles buildings in other parts of the nation where brick was commonly used.
To the left was Los Gatos Market, a fixture at that location for many years, and the Masonic Lodge Hall was upstairs to the far left. Today the lodge is office space. In this era, commerce was located along Main Street as far east as the high school.
Until 1959, railroad tracks ran between the two banks-- B. of A. at the site of the Theresa Building and Los Gatos First National on the east side of the tracks and facing Main Street.
Lyndon came here from Vermont, worked in lumber mills in the hills south of Los Gatos and became the town's leading builder. Lyndon Hall stood at lower Santa Cruz Avenue, and Hotel Lyndon was located at the southwest corner of Santa Cruz Avenue and Main Street, at first called Hotel Street. His wife Theresa was a daughter of an Oregon Territory pathfinder who moved his family to the Los Gatos area.
Today, Lyndon Plaza, at the site of the former Lyndon Hotel, bears the builder's name.
This article appeared in the Los Gatos Weekly-Times, May 1, 1996.
©1996 Metro Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved