In the Groovy Epicenter of San Francisco History

It was a little past ten o'clock in the vening when we entered the front doors of the St. Francis Hotel. I know because I noticed the clock in the lobby---the famous master clock.

Orig. 1904 building, before additions

We'd made it the last stop of our splendid Sunday evening. We'd walked down from Nob Hill after trying to catch the cable car next to the Fairmont after our tour of the hilltop.

We'd just missed the cable car, but walking proved to be the better option anyway.  The air was pleasant and the sidewalks were dark but lively with other folks enjoying the evening.

When we got to Union Square, we marveled over the renovated department stores on the south side. It was clear that cities were fully "back," Red noted. I reminisced about the time many years ago that I bought a pair of black men's shoes in one of the stores there to go to Coop's first wedding.

Staring up the facade of the St. Francis, on the west side of the square, I insisted that we take a few moments to peek in and see the interior. If you're going to see one hotel in this city for historical reasons, then it probably should be this one. It's not because of the old-time grandeur, for it has been renovated several times top to bottom, and has been architecturally "spoiled." Rather it is because of what has taken place there.

As we crossed the street to the front door of the hotel, I pointed out to Red that the view southward on Stockton was exactly the same as a famous photo of the ravaged city just after the quake and fire.

Fatty wished he'd stayed elsewhere

Immediately after we entered the front doors, it was obvious the lobby of St. Francis was of much more recent vintage than the Fairmont or the Palace, even though the St. Francis was older than those two.  The bar looked like something one might see on the contemporary Las Vegas Strip---classy and bit classic, but definitely modern.

Built in 1904, the structure survived the quake fairly well but was gutted completely by the fire. In the ruins army troosp turned dining rooms with collapsed ceilings into impromptu mess halls. But the interior was rebuilt, and even expanded, and became much grander.

More than its rivals, it became a central pivot point of San Francisco history, as early as the 1910s. Famous guests included Woodrow Wilson, Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, and Fatty Arbuckle (on the very night that ruined him).

In the 1920s, Art Hickman and Paul Whiteman brought jazz to the masses in the famous Rose Room. After Pearl Harbor, the hotel embraced the role of being a transfer point for ordinary uniformed Americans on their way to and from the Pacific Theater.

Later in 1945 came the UN delegations at the famous conference, when Molotov and Nelson Rockefeller stayed there. And it even survived as relevant into the modern era. Sara Jane Moore took a shot at Ford here. Reagan frequently stayed here. Queen Elizabeth and Hirohito did too.

Part of the cost for this modern relevance was the addition of a gaudy modern tower in 1972. But it spoils the original one no more than do other juxtapositions in this city. At this point, it almost lends a bizarre postmodern funky charm to it.

Instead what broke the link with the past was the remodeling of the lobby and the removal of its famous interior spaces, such as the Rose Room, as well as the Mural Room, where GIs danced before shipping off to the war.

Gerald Ford was a fellow lucky visitor to the St. Francis

Most of what you can see of this era today is contained in exhibits in glass cases in the hotel lobby. We spent a good half hour perusing them, and walked to the back part of the lobby to look at the Ansel Adams display (Adams was frequent guest during his urban commercial projects).

Then, having seen as much as there was to see that way, and not feeling up to another cocktail in the Vegasy lounge, we went back out through the front doors.

All in all, looking back, it was a fitting place for Red and I to experience this interesting but thankfully harmless event, by some stroke of luck.  Of we didn't actually consciously feel the quake, being safely distant from it. It was out on the Cascadia fault instead of along the San Andreas. We learned about it only a couple days later.

But it was certainly that event, and not the ghosts of the Rose Room, that gave yours truly a fitful sleep that night in our room in the nearby Parc 55 Wyndham. The hotel must have been ringing like a tuning fork all night long.

Sometimes things just work out that way to make a trip a bit more fun. When it happens in a city you love so much, like this one, it makes it all the sweeter. But if that's as close as I get to experiencing a true "big one" here, I'll live out my life as a perfectly happy man.