James Graham Fair was one of the "Silver Kings" of the Comstock Lode, an Irish immigrant who made his fortune in Nevada silver mining and served as a U.S. senator from Nevada. After his death in 1894, his daughters Theresa Fair Oelrichs and Virginia Fair Vanderbilt built the hotel in his honor, choosing the most prominent site on Nob Hill -- a location that placed the Fairmont among the mansions of the city's other mining and railroad magnates. The hotel's name became the foundation of the Fairmont Hotels and Resorts chain, which expanded internationally while the original hotel maintained its position as the flagship.

The 1906 earthquake tested the building but did not break it. The fire that followed the earthquake, however, destroyed the nearly completed interior. Stanford White's original design was lost to the flames, and the hotel's owners hired Julia Morgan -- who would later design Hearst Castle -- to reimagine the public spaces. Morgan's redesign gave the Fairmont the grand lobby, sweeping staircases, and ornamental flourishes that define it today. Her work transformed a disaster into an opportunity: the hotel that opened in 1907 was arguably more elegant than the one that burned, its interiors reflecting Morgan's sensitivity to light, proportion, and the drama of arrival.

The Fairmont holds a quiet distinction in American hospitality: it was the first hotel in the United States to offer concierge services. Tom Wolfe, who had trained in Europe, served as the Fairmont's first concierge from 1973 to 1981, introducing a level of personalized service that American hotels had not previously attempted. The hotel's guest list over the decades reads like a registry of 20th-century power and celebrity. Every sitting president from Taft onward is said to have stayed here. The building doubled as the fictional St. Gregory Hotel in the 1980s television series Hotel, its ornate lobby and Nob Hill views providing a ready-made backdrop for prime-time drama.

The Fairmont's location is its ultimate asset. Nob Hill is the geographic and symbolic summit of San Francisco wealth, the neighborhood where the Big Four railroad barons -- Stanford, Hopkins, Crocker, and Huntington -- built their mansions in the 1870s. The earthquake and fire of 1906 leveled most of those mansions, and luxury hotels rose in their place: the Fairmont, the Mark Hopkins, the Huntington. Today the Fairmont presides over the intersection of Mason and California Streets, its facade lit at night like a crown. The cable cars of the California Street line climb directly past the entrance, carrying tourists and commuters past a building that has been receiving guests since Theodore Roosevelt was president.