A Room with A View at The Palace--in San Francisco

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Where to start. This is the most fascinating thing ever, and I could give the fabulous Ann Parker (and her newest book

MORTAL MUSIC)  a big intro and tease you into reading this amazing view into history.

But I know you, darling Reds and readers. Let me just say a few  words: Sarah Bernhardt. Lily Langtry. Tigers.  Enrico Caruso. The 1906 San Francisco earthquake. 

Are you skipping ahead? Of course you are.

A Room at the Palace 

          By Ann Parker

When Inez Stannert, the protagonist of my Silver Rush historical mystery series, left the Rocky Mountain mining town of Leadville, Colorado, to settle in San Francisco, California, she needed a place to stay. Such initial thinking led me to exploring what hotels existed in 1881 in "the Paris of the West." 

One place in particular cropped up again and again: The Palace Hotel. The Palace, the brain-child of San Francisco banker and investor William C. Ralston, opened in October 1875 and was well established by the time Inez and her 12-year-old ward, Antonia Gizzi, would have made their way to the city.

  Engraved illustration of the original Palace Hotel in San Francisco (1887).

Luckily for me, information about the Palace Hotel liberally dots the research landscape. It was renowned in its time, and no wonder—it was not only magnificent, it was HUGE, seven stories tall and covering an entire city block downtown. Each of its 755 guest rooms had a bay window overlooking the street below and a private bathroom. (In 1875, private bathrooms were a big deal.)

Carriages and hacks brought passengers up a circular driveway into the "grand court," which featured a tropical garden, statuary, and fountains and an enormous glass skylight seven stories above. Hotel guests and residents could lean over the balustrades on the various levels and watch the rich and famous come and go below.

And oh, there were many rich and famous who paraded across its marble floors and ascended the redwood-paneled "rising rooms" (aka elevators). 

For instance, general and former U.S. president Ulysses S. Grant stopped there in 1879. (Later in that same trip, he visited Leadville, Colorado. His visit there plays a crucial role in two early Silver Rush books—Iron Ties and Leaden Skies, but I digress.) Civil War generals Philip Sheridan and William T. Sherman were also feted at the Palace. Visitors representing the literary arts included Rudyard Kipling, Oscar Wilde, Julia Ward Howe, and newspaper-publisher and writer Miriam Leslie (who managed Leslie's Weekly after her husband's death).

What interested me most were the stories of various nineteenth and early twentieth century singers and actors and actresses who stayed within its walls. One of the better-known guests was the tenor Enrico Caruso, who was in the hotel when the famous 1906 earthquake struck. (One oft-told tale is that he came to the balcony and sang to calm the hysterical masses, however the story is apparently apocryphal. You can read an account of what really went down here on SF Gate.) 

Besides Caruso, luminaries included opera singers Adelina Patti and Emma Nevada and actresses Sarah Bernhardt and Lilly Langtry. 

In 1887, Bernhardt arrived at her eight-room Palace Hotel suite, surrounded by a mountain of baggage and her pet parrot and baby tiger. Langtry checked in with thirty-two trunks and twenty-eight leather hat-boxes and valises, while Patti bested those numbers with thirty-six trunks and countless other bits of luggage. As I pored over descriptions of the trials, tribulations, and triumphs of these performers and others, Theia Carrington Drake—the fictional prima donna of Mortal Music—took form in my imagination.

 Lillie Langtry and Sarah Bernhardt were both guests at the Palace Hotel, although not at the same time, as far as I can tell.

As I researched the hotel's history, I also became intrigued by the story of the staff who, visible and invisible, kept the Palace running. Warren Leland, the original manager, hired nearly 200 African-American hotel employees—a very unusual move in 1870s San Francisco. 

They occupied highly coveted positions at what was described as "the largest, most exclusive hotel west of the Mississippi." Around 150 men were hired to be waiters, bellmen, porters, and cooks, while a goodly number of women took positions as chambermaids. The book Pioneer Urbanites: A Social and Cultural History of Black San Francisco by Douglas Henry Daniels, notes "... the salaries were good, and the patrons gave handsome tips." However, the situation did not last. 

When new management took over in the late 1880s, black cooks and waiters were immediately fired and instantly replaced with white employees. This 1889 article in the Daily Alta California provides some background.

But the story of the Palace Hotel is more than glitter and glamor and upstairs/downstairs. With more than a thousand souls living or working within its walls, the Palace was a city within a city. Bonanza Inn sums it up nicely:

"Whatever happened elsewhere in the way of human behavior was certain sooner or later to happen there. Within its walls men and women schemed and quarreled, gambled away fortunes and conducted profitable businesses, drank to excess and delivered lectures on temperance, lived in adultery and led exemplary lives—all according to their preferences and their opportunities... "

This nineteenth-century "city within a city" proved the perfect place for me to bring my fictional diva Theia Carrington Drake, her newspaper-publisher husband, and their entourage and for me to kickstart Mortal Music's tale of mystery, murder, and deception. 

And I suspect that, like many of the hotel's esteemed visitors from the past, I will return there again in the future.

HANK: Oh, I am swooning. Have you been to the Palace Hotel? ANY palace hotel? It reminds me of the line from that movie Grand Hotel--"people come and people go, but there is always the Grand Hotel." 

What's the most wonderful hotel you've ever visited?

And a copy of MORTAL MUSIC to one lucky commenter!

And Ann Says: PS: The Palace Hotel was destroyed in the fire following the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. It was rebuilt, and remains a hotel today. You can visit, have brunch at the Garden Court restaurant with its vaulted glass dome above, and use your imagination to time-travel to nineteenth-century San Francisco. For more information, check out A Brief Illustrated History of the Palace Hotel by Bruce Cooper.

Ann Parker is a science writer by day and historical mystery writer at night. Her award-winning Silver Rush mystery series, published by Poisoned Pen Press (a Sourcebooks imprint), is set primarily in 1880s Colorado, and more recently in San Francisco, the "Paris of the West." The series was named a Booksellers Favorite by the Mountains and Plains Independent Booksellers Association. 

Mortal Music is the seventh and newest in the series. For more information about Ann and her books (and links to some really fun historical tidbits about Leadville and San Francisco), click here. 

MORTAL MUSIC (Silver Rush Book 7) 

"Richly nuanced period details and vivid characters enhance a plot that takes some surprising turns." —Publishers Weekly