When the Rustigian Building opened in 1920, it entered the world as something practical: a bus depot. Anchor Stage Lines moved in that October, turning the one-and-a-half-story Classical Revival structure into a hub for travelers heading out to the surrounding orchards, vineyards, mountains, and beaches. This was a California still being knit together by road, and Fresno sat at the center of a vast agricultural region where the distances between towns could be measured in hours of dusty driving. The scored stucco siding and flat parapet roofline gave the building a quiet dignity appropriate to its role as a gateway, designed by Schwartz & Rayland, an architecture firm known for residential, commercial, and school buildings throughout the Central Valley. They would later expand to the Bay Area, establishing branch offices in Monterey and Salinas by the 1930s.

After the bus lines moved on, the Rustigian Building became a container for whatever downtown Fresno needed it to be. Through the 1930s, 40s, and 50s, a rotating cast of tenants occupied its rooms. At one point, someone even lived on the second floor, an apartment tucked into what had been designed as commercial space. The building adapted because it had to. Downtown Fresno was changing around it, the postwar suburbanization pulling residents and businesses outward, the pedestrian mall experiment of the 1960s trying to pull them back. The Rustigian Building sat through all of it, its Classical Revival facade growing more anachronistic with each passing decade, the inscription above the arcade becoming a question more than an answer: Who was J.M. Rustigian, and why does his name still hang over this corner?

The building's architecture tells a story of early-twentieth-century aspirations. Classical Revival was a deliberate choice, one that said permanence and respectability in a city still proving itself. The arcade at the center of the front facade gives the structure a public, inviting quality, an opening to the street that commercial buildings of later decades would abandon in favor of blank walls and parking lots. The simple cornice and parapet keep things restrained, avoiding the ornamentation that might have dated it faster. Fresno's Local Register of Historic Resources recognized this staying power, listing the front facade as Historic Property #161. The designation acknowledges what a century of tenants already demonstrated: the building works.

In 2019, the Rustigian Building reopened after renovation, fitted out for retail and restaurant tenants in a downtown Fresno trying once more to reinvent itself. The address had changed over the decades. What was once 715 J Street became Fulton Street, renamed in 1910 to honor Fulton G. Berry, a prominent local financier. The building now spans 701 to 723 Fulton Street, sitting at the south end of what became the Fulton Mall. The renovation preserved the historic facade while updating the interior for a new generation of commerce. Whether this iteration sticks longer than the bus depot or the revolving door of mid-century tenants remains to be seen. But Rustigian's name, carved in stone, will be watching from above the arcade regardless.