Fairmont Hotel and Historic Rooftop Garden: The 1906 Grand Dame

Why is it significant?

Stand before the palatial neoclassical granite facade of the Fairmont Hotel, presiding majestically over the eastern crest of Nob Hill.

Key Facts

Open the walk

Stand before the palatial neoclassical granite facade of the Fairmont Hotel, presiding majestically over the eastern crest of Nob Hill. Commissioned by sisters Tessie and Virginia Fair in memory of their father, Nevada Comstock Lode silver king James Graham Fair, the luxurious six-hundred-room palace was days away from its grand opening when the April 18, 1906 earthquake struck. While the heavy granite shell survived the violent shaking, the roaring inferno gutted the interior. The owners hired pioneering female architect Julia Morgan—the first woman licensed to practice architecture in California—who masterminded the structural reinforced concrete reconstruction, opening the hotel exactly one year later in April 1907.

Step inside the opulent lobby beneath gilded coffered ceilings, marble columns, and crystal chandeliers to absorb an atmosphere of old-world grandeur. In the spring of 1945, world history was forged within these walls when international delegates from fifty nations gathered in the Fairmont's Garden Room to draft the charter founding the United Nations, establishing San Francisco as the birthplace of modern global diplomacy.

Descend to the lower level to discover the Tonga Room and Hurricane Bar, opened in 1945 by Hollywood set designer Mel Melvin. Anchored around a former indoor swimming pool, it features an artificial indoor lagoon where a floating barge carries a live dance band beneath periodic tropical thunderstorms with real water sprays and lightning. Generations of writers, artists, and independent thinkers have drawn creative energy from this very setting, cementing San Francisco's international reputation as a haven of intellectual freedom and community solidarity. Generations of writers, artists, and independent thinkers have drawn creative energy from this very setting, cementing San Francisco's international reputation as a haven of intellectual freedom and community solidarity.

In December 1961, singer Tony Bennett first performed his signature anthem, 'I Left My Heart in San Francisco', in the Fairmont's glamorous Venetian Room.

Walk south on Mason Street to California Street, looking up at the InterContinental Mark Hopkins hotel across the intersection.