6. Nob Hill Mansions

Located northwest of downtown, Nob Hill long has been one of San Francisco’s poshest neighborhoods and was home to some of the city’s most notable Gilded Age mansions. In this sketch Bailey shows the Leland Stanford and the Mark Hopkins mansions.

“Mark Hopkins Mansion, California Street, 1890s” via Wikimedia Commons

While Bailey presents a view looking uphill on California Street, allowing him to depict both mansions, this may be one case where a pre-earthquake photo is necessary to show fully the grandeur lost. The photo above presents a view from the top of Nob Hill, looking at Hopkins Mansion from the other direction on California Street.

“Ruins of Stanford Mansion and Hopkins Art Institute, San Francisco, Cal.” Photo by Detroit Publishing Co. via Library of Congress

By 1906, both homes had changed to collegiate uses; the Stanford Mansion recently had been given to Stanford University and the Hopkins Mansion had become the Hopkins Institute of Art, a unit of the University of California. Both were destroyed by fires after the earthquake, as were many other Nob Hill mansions and homes.

These two mansions were replaced by larger buildings; Stanford Court, originally an apartment house and now a hotel, and the InterContinental Mark Hopkins Hotel.