Railroad barons built their mansions on this hill, the 1906 earthquake burned them to the ground, and it rebuilt itself into the most elegant address in San Francisco around you. Nob Hill — the name likely derives from the Hindi word nabob, meaning a man of great wealth — became the preferred address of the Central Pacific Railroad's Big Four in the 1870s after Andrew Hallidie's cable car made the summit accessible. Leland Stanford, Collis Huntington, Charles Crocker, and Mark Hopkins built enormous wooden mansions on these blocks, each more ostentatious than the last.
The earthquake and fire of 1906 destroyed every one of them. Grace Cathedral, the Episcopal cathedral before you, was built on the site of the Crocker family mansion, which the Crocker family donated to the diocese after the fire. The cathedral, modeled on Notre Dame de Paris, was built in stages from 1910 to 1964 and is the third-largest Episcopal cathedral in the United States.
Its bronze doors are casts of Lorenzo Ghiberti's Gates of Paradise from the Baptistery in Florence. The Fairmont Hotel across California Street was under construction when the earthquake struck; its stone shell survived the fire and the hotel opened in 1907 — one year after the earthquake destroyed the city.