Fairmont San Francisco

The Fairmont San Francisco stands as a monument to a vision that barely survived its own birth. Two sisters, Theresa Fair Oelrichs and Virginia Fair Vanderbilt, commissioned the hotel to honor their father, the silver mining magnate James Graham Fair. The structure was completed just in time to face the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. While the building's exterior frame held firm against the tremors, the interior was gutted by the fires that swept the city immediately afterward. The sisters refused to let the dream die, hiring the pioneering architect Julia Morgan to oversee the massive reconstruction. Exactly one year after the disaster, the hotel opened its doors to a city eager for a sign of its own rebirth.