Louis Bank of Commerce & Wyatt Earp's Saloons: Wild West High Rolling

Why is it significant?

Look up at the magnificent four-story granite and pressed-brick facade of the Louis Bank of Commerce at eight thirty-five Fifth Avenue.

Key Facts

Open the walk

Look up at the magnificent four-story granite and pressed-brick facade of the Louis Bank of Commerce at eight thirty-five Fifth Avenue. Completed in eighteen eighty-eight, this Baroque Revival masterpiece was San Diego's very first granite building, crowned by two soaring mansard roof towers topped with carved American eagles.

During the real estate boom of the late eighteen eighties, legendary frontier lawman Wyatt Earp—fresh from his famous gunfight at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, Arizona—arrived in San Diego with his wife Josie. Earp leased and operated four popular gambling saloons in the Gaslamp Quarter, including the Golden Poppy and the White Elephant, where he dealt faro and twenty-one to railroad magnates and prospectors.

Upstairs in the Louis Bank of Commerce operated the Golden Poppy Hotel, an upscale brothel run by Madam Cora, where each room was decorated in a different color scheme to match the gown worn by the courtesan occupying it.

Walk west along Broadway down toward the shimmering waters of San Diego Bay.