San Francisco Hotel Confidential! The Fairmont Hotel

San Francisco hotels have been part of the fabric of the city since the Gold Rush of 1849.   In the early days, flop houses for sailors and miners seeking their fortune sprouted up as the ships docked in the harbor.  Many of the ships carrying gold miners around Cape Hope, would often take several weeks to travel from the ports of the east coast, around the tip of South America, to San Francisco.  In that time all the crew heard was the rumor gold was easy to find so by the time the ships docked, it was not unusual for the passengers to disembark, followed by the crew, and sometimes even the captain.  

Having fallen to the spell of easy riches, many abandoned ships just lay fallow in the harbor.  So many ships abandoned by passengers, crew and captain seeking their fortune, they kind of just sat there.

Naturally, enterprising entrepreneurs exploited them and converted them for lodging.  Ironically some of the first hotels in San Francisco were not in the city, but ships floating in the harbor, abandoned by both captain and crew.  As the city morphed from a gold rush port to a cosmopolitan metropolis, the city's hotels grew in stature as they city did. 

As grand and famous as some of those hotels became, there is also a dark side to their past.  With every glowing piece in the society column, there were also scandals, disasters, and controversies they prefer you don't know.

Not so much a scandal, but rather bad timing.  The world-famous Fairmont Hotel has topped Nob Hill for over a century.  You may have seen a little movie called The Rock, where Sean Connery escaped from FBI agents.  It's also where an little-known singer named Tony Bennett premiered an east-to-forget little nothing of a song with no cultural relevance called, I Left My Heart In San Francisco, in the hotel's Venetian Room.

The Fairmont Hotel, now on Tony Bennett Way

When I say bad timing, I meant that this grand edifice took years to build and cost millions of dollars before their doors were set to open on April 18th, 1906. 

Hmmmm?  Why does that date seem familiar?

Tragically and ironically, the morning of the hotel's grand opening, the great earthquake and fire struck the city.   As it had not opened, there were no guests yet, so it was spared the carnage other buildings suffered. And if that was all that happened, the Fairmont would have gotten by pretty easily. 

But then came the fire, spreading from the lower sections of the city.  In a desperate attempt to stop the fire from spreading further, the US Army tried to create firebreaks of collapsed buildings with dynamite.   With each successive demolition, the fire just leapfrogged up Nob Hill and tore through the neighborhood like a hot knife through butter. 

And that was the day of their grand opening.

The Fairmont Hotel

Once the fire was doused, the city started to rebuild quickly.  They say the reclaimed bricks from the collapsed buildings were still warm from the fire when they were cleaned off and used again.  The Fairmont Hotel was no exception.  Julia Morgan, the architect who famously designed Heart Castle was commissioned to oversee the Fairmont's renovation.  Yet in another example of historic irony, the Fairmont Hotel made it their mission to be the first major structure to reopen.  And it did. Ironically on April 18th, 1907.  Exactly one year to the day it was destroyed by fire.