# Mark Hopkins Hotel

The InterContinental Mark Hopkins San Francisco is a luxury hotel located at the top of Nob Hill in San Francisco, California. The InterContinental Mark Hopkins Hotel is included in the program Historic Hotels of America. The hotel occupies the site of the Mark Hopkins mansion, which was destroyed by fire caused by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Comstock Lode mining engineer and hotel investor George D. Smith purchased the Nob Hill site, removed the San Francisco Art Association building, and began construction of a luxury hotel that he conceived and financed. Smith opened the hotel in December 1926 and operated it until January 1962. Eventually the hotel was acquired by the InterContinental Hotels Group.

## Quotes

* In January 2017, before President Donald Trump's inauguration, I attended the annual Association of American Law Schools conference in San Francisco. I stayed at the Mark Hopkins Hotel high up on Nob Hill—a walk away from the conference site at the Hilton in the business district near Union Square. My well-appointed vintage-style room was on an upper floor that overlooked the city, the Golden Gate Bridge and the bay. At night, a thick fog rolled in, blocking out the views—fog so dense that it was impossible to see beyond it. The fog gradually burned off in the morning. Nob Hill appeared first, then the city below, the tops of the bridges and, finally, Sausalito and Marin in the crystalline distance beyond Alcatraz Island and the bay.
** Philip N. Meyer, (February 2018)"Paint a Picture". America Bar Association Journal 104.
* My favorite room in the hotel is 1508, also known as the Cyril Magnin Suite. One of our long time resident guests, Mr. Magnin, lived here for over 30 years. His family owned the I. Magnin store. Cyril, the old man, was a bachelor (at least when he was here). He was alone with his little Yorkshire Terrier named Tippycanoe. He had his own butler and a driver who picked him up daily. He was an old-school gentleman, a bon vivant. When I started here, we had four or five resident guests that stayed 30 to 40 years. This Cyril Magnin suite has a beautiful living room, dining room along with an outdoor terrace overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge and the North Bay. The bedroom and bath are large and very luxurious. ... The Top of the Mark Lounge was opened in 1939 and soon became a favorite for all the servicemen as their last drink in the city before shipping off overseas for World War II.
** Dan Satelo, Concierge Secrets: Intercontinental Mark Hopkins, San Francisco. Travel News, Peter Greenberg Worlwide (February 24, 2024). (interview by Jamie Stringfelow)
* Wesley Dumm's KPIX, the first Bay Area television station, came on the air from the Mark Hopkins Hotel on Christmas Eve 1948, when there were just 3,500 television sets in California.
** John F. Schneider, Bay Area Radio. Images of America Book Series. Charleston, South Carolina: Arcadia Publishing. 2012. p. 113. ISBN 0738589101.
* ... The hotel is in the abbreviated Gothic Revival style of the 1920s and is notable for its site plan, which incorporates a drive-in entrance court, and for the 1936 rooftop lounge designed by Timothy Pflueger, the Top of the Mark, long the most famous cocktail lounge in town and ancestor of many hoteltop restaurants.
** Sally Byrne Woodbridge and John Marshall Woodbridge, Architecture—San Francisco: The Guide. American Institute of Architects, San Francisco Chapter. 1982. p. 55. ISBN 0892862041. 1st part of quote last part of quote

## External links

* Encyclopedic article on Mark Hopkins Hotel on Wikipedia
* InterContinental Mark Hopkins Hotel. Historic Hotels of America (historic hotels.org).