The original Palace Hotel opened in 1875 at the southwest corner of Market and New Montgomery Streets. It was the largest hotel in the western United States at the time, with 755 rooms and a grand interior court where carriages could drive in and guests could alight under a glass roof. Its builder, William Ralston, did not live to see the opening. The hotel became a center of San Francisco's social and political life, hosting presidents, foreign dignitaries, and the city's elite. On January 20, 1891, King Kalakaua of Hawaii died at the Palace during a visit to California. President Warren G. Harding died at the Palace on August 2, 1923, while on a tour of the western states. The original building was destroyed in the fire following the 1906 earthquake.

The current Palace Hotel was rebuilt on the same site and opened in 1909. Its most famous feature is the Garden Court, a soaring dining room with a stained-glass ceiling, marble columns, and crystal chandeliers. The room occupies the space where the original carriage court once stood. Opera singer Luisa Tetrazzini was such a regular guest that the hotel's chef created a dish in her honor: chicken Tetrazzini. The Garden Court has been designated a San Francisco landmark and remains one of the most celebrated dining rooms in America. Maxfield Parrish's massive painting The Pied Piper of Hamelin hangs in the hotel bar named after it, a piece of art worth millions that guests pass on their way to cocktails.

The Palace has witnessed more than its share of history. Two American presidents died within its walls. The hotel housed the delegates to the conference that drafted the United Nations Charter in 1945. In more recent decades, it has been renovated repeatedly, most recently as the Palace Hotel, a Luxury Collection Hotel under the Marriott umbrella. The stained-glass ceiling of the Garden Court was restored, the guest rooms modernized, and the Pied Piper Bar preserved. The building sits on ground that was once underwater, then covered in sand dunes, then leveled by steam shovels and filled with ambition. The Palace is San Francisco's living monument to the idea that if you build it grand enough, history will come to you.