Fairmont San Francisco

The Fairmont San Francisco stands at the crest of Nob Hill, at 950 Mason Street, a Beaux-Arts hotel that opened in 1907 and gave its name to the Fairmont brand. It is the house where the United Nations Charter was drafted in 1945 and where Tony Bennett first sang I Left My Heart in San Francisco in 1961, and it is still the San Francisco luxury hotel chosen for state visits, galas and society weddings.

History

The hotel was commissioned by Theresa Fair Oelrichs and Virginia Fair Vanderbilt, daughters of the Comstock silver magnate James Graham Fair, and named in his memory. The building was almost finished when the earthquake of 18 April 1906 struck. The structure held, but the fire that followed gutted the interiors. The sisters had already sold the property, and the new owners entrusted the reconstruction to Julia Morgan, a young engineer and architect who would later build Hearst Castle. The Fairmont opened on 18 April 1907, one year to the day after the disaster.

In 1945 the delegates of the San Francisco Conference used the Garden Room to draft the Charter of the United Nations, which was then signed at the War Memorial Opera House. The same year the hotel passed to Benjamin Swig, whose family added the 29-storey tower in 1961. On an evening of December 1961 Tony Bennett gave the first public performance of I Left My Heart in San Francisco in the Venetian Room. The hotel is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is operated by Fairmont Hotels & Resorts, the company that grew out of this building.

Architecture and design

The original plans were drawn by the Reid Brothers, the San Francisco firm also responsible for the Hotel del Coronado. Julia Morgan directed the post-fire rebuilding and strengthened the structure. The granite and terracotta facade in the Beaux-Arts manner encloses a lobby of marble columns, gilded capitals and a coffered ceiling, restored at the turn of the century. Below ground, the Tonga Room & Hurricane Bar opened in 1945 inside the former indoor swimming pool, the Fairmont Plunge. It keeps its lagoon, a floating bandstand and periodic indoor rainstorms, and is one of the oldest surviving tiki bars in the United States.

Rooms and suites

The hotel has 606 rooms and suites divided between the 1907 main building, with high ceilings and tall windows, and the 1961 tower, whose upper floors look over the bay, Alcatraz and the Golden Gate Bridge. The Penthouse Suite occupies the top of the main building with its own terrace, a two-storey library and a billiard room. It has housed presidents and heads of state and is one of the most famous suites in the country.

Dining

Laurel Court, beneath the vaulted ceiling off the lobby, serves breakfast, lunch, afternoon tea and dinner. The Tonga Room pairs Pacific Rim cooking with its lagoon stage and nightly band. Both are open to non-residents.

Weddings and events

The Fairmont's reception rooms have served San Francisco society since the hotel opened in 1907. The Gold Room, with its gilded ceiling and chandeliers, is the principal ballroom. The Venetian Room, the former supper club where Ella Fitzgerald, Nat King Cole and Tony Bennett performed, is now used for dinners and receptions. The Crown Room at the top of the tower offers a full circle of views over the city, and the Garden Room, where the UN Charter was drafted, suits smaller meetings and ceremonies. Weddings take place in the Gold Room, the Penthouse Suite and the terrace rooms; conferences use the meeting floor and the business centre.

Location

The hotel sits at the corner of Mason and California streets, on the California Street cable car line. The InterContinental Mark Hopkins faces it across the street, Grace Cathedral is two blocks west, and Union Square, Chinatown and the Financial District lie downhill within walking distance. Twenty-five kilometres or so to the south is San Francisco International Airport.