Page:The Tourist's California by Wood, Ruth Kedzie.djvu/58

 38 THE TOURISTS CALIFORNIA two-story Parker House was leased in the early gold-rush for $15,000 a month. Ships abandoned by crews gone mad for gold were seized and their cabins rented at Brobdingnagian rates. The fashionable hotel of 1849 was the St. Francis at Clay and Dupont Streets. Its vogue was sur- passed by the Oriental in 1851. The Russ, the Lick, the Occidental and the Cosmopolitan pre- ceded the Palace, which upon its completion in 1875 was called " the largest, most costly, most commodious in the world." Thus early did Cali- fornians begin to assume that all that was best in their State was the biggest and best in the world. But the Palace was truly a gigantic and home-like caravansary, known to wanderers everywhere. When the fire of 1906 ate into its great court and left standing but a veneer of walls pierced by blackened window-frames, many in far lands mourned it for the cheer it had given. Above the stricken city smouldered the Fairmont. The new St. Francis was a ruin. Scarcely one hotel of good class survived the disaster. But now all the old names and many new ones are dis- played on San Francisco's hotel signs. Not a shabby corridor remains. The city is not only renovated, it is made new. No community of its size has so many modern hotels of superior ap- pointments. Oakland and Berkeley possess houses new and