San Francisco Hotel Confidential! The Palace 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.

It was not until 1875 did San Francisco unveil its first real fancy hoel, what I call one of the Grand Dames of the city's hotels.  

The Palace Hotel opened to great fanfare.  At eight floors it was the largest hotel west of Chicago and the tallest building in San Francisco for a decade.  For generations, it was the only hotel for notable people to reside in.  

None other than Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev,  former president Woodrow Wilson,  John D. Rockefeller, Oscar Wilde, Prince Phillip - Duke of Edinburgh, Charlie Chaplin, Frank Sinatra, Sophie Loren, and Whoopi Goldberg are just a smattering of the scores of celebrities and heads-of-sate who crossed the Palace's threshold.  Michael Douglas even fell through the skylight above the Palace's Garden Court in the 1997 film, The Game.

The Palace Hotel

From the day it opened, however, it was shrouded in controversy. Financier William Ralston, the hotel' s principal investor, died mysteriously only a couple of months before its grand opening.  They said he drowned in the bay, but some historians question if it was accidental.

Legendary opera singer Enrico Caruso came to San Francisco and stayed at the Palace.  He performed for the first time in the city, on April 17th, 1906.  On his first morning he was awakened, not by his valet with breakfast, but by an earthquake.

Yes, that earthquake.

So rattled was he that he vowed never to return to San Francisco, and he never did.  This just in from the Irony Department... He was born in the Naples region of southern Italy, which by the way has its own history with earthquakes.  Or what the Neapolitans called, "Terra Motto."

On August 23rd,1923, president Warren G Harding died mysteriously in the Place Hotel.  I say mysteriously because his wife refused an autopsy, fueling rumors she may have poisoned him.  That theory was latter rebuked by historians, but he was also rumored to have had multiple affaires. 

For almost 150 years, and despite its colorful history, the Palace Hotel remains one of the top hotels in San Francisco.  In fact, a friend of mine stayed there last week.