Transamerica Pyramid

600 Montgomery St, San Francisco, CA 94111

1972

William L. Pereira & Associates

William L. Pereira & Associates

Unknown

Unknown

Crocker National Bank

Present whereabouts and condition unknown.

TVS digital records.

“Wall sculptures, two of a group of six...were commissioned by Crocker National Bank of San Francisco for the bank’s new branch in the Transamerica Pyramid. The abstract bird forms are fashioned from surplus stainless steel and titanium aircraft parts – - specifically, sections from one of the three prototypes of the ill-fated B-70. Architects and interior designers of the bank space were William L. Pereira Associates.

Swords into ploughshares or something. Do you remember the XB-70 bomber program? You should, since it cost you close to $2 billion, although only three prototypes were built (for YOU) at North American Aviation in L.A. The first was destroyed in a midair collision in 1966 and the second now reposes among the other dinosaurs at the Air Force museum in Dayton, Ohio. And the third? Well it wound up in crates scattered here and there. Sculptor Tom Van Sant bought a lot of the stainless steel and titanium and fashioned the metal into huge abstract birds that now adorn the walls of the new Crocker Bank branch in the Transamerica pyramid." [2]

 Tony Sheets assisted Van Sant on this project.

PRESENT WHEREABOUTS?

Crocker Bank merged with Wells Fargo Bank in 1986. “As Wells Fargo merged with other banks or downsized and closed buildings, the Corporate Art Resources department has been responsible for inventorying the pieces.” [3] Forms of Flight should therefore be part of Wells Fargo’s extensive art collection. However, as Wells Fargo’s Senior Corporate Art Curator explained: “after extensive searching of both our collection records and Archives, we have not located these items in our records." [4]

The Transamerica building was sold to NYC investor Michael Shvo in 2020. NormanFoster was hired to redesign the interiors of the building in 2022. It is extremely unlikely therefore that Vans Sant’s sculptures remain in what is now the Wells Fargo Bank branch in the Transamerica building.

WHAT WAS THE “ILL-FATED B-70”?

“Before the advent of stealth technology, the variable that mattered more than any other in terms of tactical aircraft survivability and lethality was speed. So in 1955 the U.S. Air Force issued a request for a high-altitude, long-range bomber that could go Mach 3 while carrying either a conventional or nuclear payload...Enter the B-70 Valkyrie, a revolutionary scream-machine that was nearly four times as fast as the legacy B-52s it was designed to replace.” [5]

[1] Ward Carroll: We Are The Mighty, “This ill-fated PR flight kept the Valkyrie from changing Air Force history,” www.wearethemighty.com

[2] David Parry, notes affixed to the reverse of black & white photographs of Bird Forms, c. 1972. TVS digital records.

[3] Herb Caen, "News From Inner Space," San Francisco Chronicle, 18 December 1972. TVS digital records.

[4] Wells Fargo Stories, https://stories.wf.com/sharing-wealth-wells-fargos-art-collection/. Accessed January 4, 2022.

[5] Shelley Hagen, email correspondence with the author, July 21, 2023.

[6] Ward Carroll: We Are The Mighty, “This ill-fated PR flight kept the Valkyrie from changing Air Force history.”