Purple Roofs Travels

Hob Nobbing With Snobs on Nob Hill:
The San Francisco Walking Tour

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On our last trip to San Francisco, we booked the wonderfully named tour above - a historic walking tour of one of the city's ritziest and storied districts - Nob Hill.

The tour starts at the Fairmont Hotel, which was brand new at the time of the Great Fire of 1906. The Fire plays a large part in the history of Nob Hill - before the flames swept through half of what's now the modern city of San Francisco, most of the buildings up here were built of wood, and were destroyed by the conflagration.

After the fire, the army had 30,000 tents for reugees set up within 3 days - compare that to the FEMA response modern-day to Katrina! These tents would stand for two years while the city was rebuilt.

The Fairmont was badly damaged before opening, but was rebuilt and opened 1 year to the day after the fire.

This hotel offers many surprises, including a gorgeous lobby, an impressive ballroom with great city views, and a hidden park looking over the eastern half of the city. You'll also find dozens and dozens of historic photos from the Great Fire along the halls of the Fairmont.

The Fairmont Hotel and the Flood Mansion (now the Pacific Union Club - photo at right) across the street were the only two buildings on the hill to survive the fire. The Flood Mansion was built by James Flood, an immigrant-turned-Saloon owner who made his money on the Comstock Lode. Built with Connecticut Brownstone, which the locals thought was crazy until it survived the fire when all the other mansions on Nob Hill burned to the ground.

Next to the Flood Mansion, you'll find Huntington Park, a cute little park designed like a mansion, with a grand entry, parlor, central living space, and the kids in the back. This park is the former site of the Huntington Mansion, owned by one of the railroad barons who made Nob Hill their home.

A nice little surprise here - one of the park benches bears a plaque that says "Ron & Joe, Married February 15th, 2004 at City Hall With 4,026 Other Living Couples". A nice little unexpected bit of gay history on the top of the hill.

The other Railroad Barons also had homes here - remembered by the Crocker Garage, the Mark Hopkins Hotel, and ths Stanford Hotel.

Down the hill toward Union Square, you'll find Grace Cathedral, on the block that used to house the Crocker Mansion. There's a great story here - when Crocker bought the block to build his mansion, one man wouldn't sell, so Crocker built a huge marble wall around three sides of the man's home out of spite (photo at left - the wall is the yellowish part). It didn't work - the man stayed in his home until he died, and the wall was eventually torn down.

But even now, you can see the remains of the wall in the sidewalk - two parallel lines of marble surrounded by concrete (photo of one of these at right) - something you'd walk over a hundred times without ever knowing their significance. Sometimes the history in San Francisco is like that - a hidden gem until someone pulls it out an polishes it up for you.

The church itself, a very gay-supportive community, has its own secrets. The first of these is the design - it was modeled after Notre Dame in Paris, without the flying buttresses.

And it has a fantastic set of doors, themselves copies of the doors on the Duomo in Florence, Italy, showing in bas relief the creation of man, Cain and Abel, the Ark, and other scenes from the bible beautifully rendered in brass. There were three copies of these doors cast - one for the Duomo, one on the Grace Cathedral, and one in a private collection. One of the panels is pictured at left.

Fans of Tales of the City will also remember this church from the books and moves of the same name.

The church also holds some amazing murals inside (below) - both religious and secular, showing the history of San Francisco on beautiful, graphic detail. And you'll find a beautiful cast metal tablet with one of Keith Herring's designs and a part of the AIDS Quilt in a small chapel dedicated to victims of AIDS near the back of the church.

We won't spill the rest of the secrets from the tour, which ends in Union Square, but it's well worth taking - even as former Bay Areans, we learned so much about the history of the city, and our guide was fantastic.