The bank’s museums contain some of the stagecoaches that inspired its logo. One of the coaches is kept at the San Francisco location.
Photo: Robert Alexander/Getty ImagesThe Wells Fargo WFC -0.41% wagon is a-going.
The bank, long obsessed with its gold rush-burnished past, will shut down 11 of its 12 museums about its corporate history, the bank told employees Tuesday. It will keep the museum in its headquarters city of San Francisco, but locations in Des Moines, Iowa, and Portland, Ore., and other cities will close.
The museums contain some of the stagecoaches that inspired the bank’s logo. They also include Alaskan native artifacts in Anchorage, Western-themed artwork in Phoenix, and a gold watch in San Diego. Robbers stole historic gold nuggets from the San Francisco museum several years ago.
“Many of the artifacts have meaning to local, diverse and other communities and we will take great care to protect and safeguard these items,” said the memo from Kathleen Senior, who oversees brand sponsorship and heritage. The memo, which was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, said Wells Fargo would donate some items to charities, museums and schools. It didn’t specify why the bank is closing the museums.
Many banks own vast amounts of historical artifacts and art. Bank of America Corp., for example, has a large collection of paintings, many of which it has lent to museums. But few others have displayed their history as prominently as Wells Fargo.
The bank, founded by Henry Wells and William Fargo in San Francisco in 1852, catered to new cities and mining camps booming from the gold rush in the American West. It used stagecoaches to ferry gold and other valuables across the country, and eventually embraced steamships, railroads and other forms of transportation to deliver business.
In the Broadway hit “The Music Man,” excited townspeople sing about the “Wells Fargo wagon” a-coming to deliver grapefruit and a bathtub.
More recently, the former Wells Fargo chief executive rode in a horse-drawn stagecoach at the annual meeting of Warren Buffett’s conglomerate, Berkshire Hathaway, in 2015. The stagecoaches and replicas have made hundreds of appearances around the country.
Now the nation’s fourth-largest bank, Wells Fargo is attempting a rebranding as it moves past a fake-accounts scandal that burst into public view in 2016. A new leadership team was brought in last fall, and CEO Charles Scharf has prioritized cutting costs and improving the bank’s relationship with regulators.
Some of the new executives were surprised to learn about the museums’ existence, according to a person familiar with the matter. Some learned about them after a Washington Post review of the Philadelphia museum last fall declared: “It looks and feels like a small museum you might find at a state park visitors center.”
The museums have been closed for months because of the new coronavirus. Another person familiar with the matter said the decisions weren’t driven by cost-cutting efforts, but rather an evolution of the bank’s brand.
Write to Ben Eisen at ben.eisen@wsj.com
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