The Mansion House in Watsonville, built in 1871 and once hailed as the most elegant hotel south of San Francisco, was considered past its prime by 1910. In 1914, owners Mateo and M.N. Lettunich, orchardists who also operated the Pájaro Valley’s largest fruit packing business, moved the hotel and hired James Patterson of San José to construct a new building known as the Lettunich Building. Called a skyscraper at the time, the steel-and-reinforced-concrete structure had twenty-seven offices on its three upper floors, served by an electric elevator, and was completed in a record six months. It featured electricity, steam heat, water throughout, the celebrated Cutter Patent Mail Chute, and an exterior of concrete and enameled terra cotta with an entrance ornament made of fruits of the Pájaro Valley. Banking began there with the Fruit Growers National Bank as a tenant in 1919; Fruit Growers sold to Liberty Bank in 1927, which became the Bank of Italy and later the Bank of America. Bank of America remained there until 1969, when it relocated to Main and Fifth Streets, and the Lettunich Building remains a central part of downtown Watsonville.