Exchange Bank, Frank P. Doyle, and the Bank’s involvement in the building of the Golden Gate Bridge

Frank Doyle ran the Exchange Bank in the 1890’s and the early 1900’s, a bank started by his father in 1890. He helped establish the Redwood Highway (modern-day U.S. 101). He helped Japanese interned during World War II get their possessions back after the war. And he sparked the idea of a bridge connecting San Francisco and Marin County.

No single person has been described as the “Father of the Golden Gate Bridge” more often than Frank Doyle. During the early 1920s, he was the president of the Santa Rosa Chamber of Commerce and worked to support highway and road development in northern California.  Doyle was the leader of the business and civic figures whose promotional efforts were essential to the passage of the $35 million bond issue in November 1930 that financed the construction of the Bridge.  While inspecting the Golden Gate Bridge several months before its official opening, Doyle was invited to turn his car over to a bridge worker who made the Bridge’s first automobile crossing.  Doyle cut one of three chains that officially opened the Bridge in May of 1937, during a ceremony attended by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.  In 1940, the Golden Gate Bridge approach road from Marina Boulevard to the Toll Plaza was named Doyle Drive.

Frank Doyle’s last will and testament stands tall above his many accomplishments. He wanted Exchange Bank to be a locally owned and managed community institution. So rather than giving his stock to his heirs, his controlling interest (50.39% of the common stock) was put into a perpetual trust. The dividends are specified for distribution by the Trustees to the Frank P. Doyle and Polly O’Meara Doyle Scholarship Fund for assistance to “worthy young men and women attending Santa Rosa Junior College.”The Doyle Trust has proven to be one of the most remarkable planned gifts in the history of American community college education. More than $76 million in scholarships has been awarded to over 115,000 students since 1948.