Morning appeal. [volume] (Carson City, Nev.) 1877-1906, 1905-07-02
\ WHITE ELEPHANT.

Why the Fairmont Cannot be Rented
Now That the Great Structure 10
Completed.
NO pile Of architecture in all San
Francisco looms up SO grandly and
impressively from the Bay as the
Fairmont Hotel. built on the crown
OF Mob Hill with the garnered mil
lions Of Senator Fair.
1t stands there. however. an I'M
completed, CHASTITY looking building
and 1t. for some strange reason cali-
not find a tentnt.
1t already begins to look more like
ruin than building just finished
The windows are not yet in and the
bats and swallows have begun to
make free with the grim array of mas
onry and there is look Of weather
saten decay about the battlements
which frown from the crest of the
big hill.
All sorts of efforts have been made
toward leasing the PLACE 'but no
one wants the responsibility and the
present owners are not easy people
to deal with. Any one who ever dealt
with old slippery Jim" in his evil
life time either had scrap on their
hands or got the worst of it and his
descendants have no special reputa
ton of being any easier to get along
with than was the famous head of
the family.
There is already current tradi-
ton that the Paramount is haunted.
II it isn't it ought TO be. Every stone
in the vast pile represents shelter
ed fortune, a broken man, a dishon
ored woman or young girl sent on
the downward path to ruin.
II these insensate stones could but
give voice to the wrongs inflicted by
the founder Of the Fair fortunes wha.
babble of accusing tongues would go
against injustice.
The children who hang about the
place after shutdown tell about the
strange noises which issue forth after
the darkness has wrapped the build.
ing In its embrace
They are quite certain they hear
the shrieks Of Fred Smith who was
murdered by John Kosser for the few
paltry thousands that McKinsey pack.
ed from the little house near the
Ophir where the killing was plotte1
by Fair. They also hear the dipair
ing shrek which went up on the
steamer between San Francisco ant
SMazetland when Kosser was hit OF
the head with an iron bar and throw
overheard in the night. They SEE
the faces in the windows of the thre,
miners who were suffocated in tn,
Ophir by shutting OF the air bias
and they hear the babblings and con
plainings of the poor woman who wa
railrOaded to San Quinten.
The place reeks with bloodshed an
chicanery and If the people who wer
the victim of ione mans insaciat
greed and rascality were to be a
lowed to find domicile there no
quickly the rooms would fill.
If the prisons and insane asylum
and poor houses could relinquish the
inmates and the suicides graves cou
give up their dead and the toni
of murdered men cast out their vi
Tins and the brothels of San Fra
cisco loosen up, it would fill the Fa
mount full to the attic and a he
of people would be standing abo
waiting for chance to register.
And what a list for the public
scan would that register be. 1t wou
contain some Of the highest as W
as the lowest names upon the Cos
and the names of men and won
who have made history since II
days of forty-nine.
It was proposed to make that m,
nificent structure a monument to t
memory of the man who furnish
the millions that built it.
One might build city Of carav,
ceries and furnish them with t
wealth of Indus but they could !
eradicate from the minds of the p
pie of the Pacific Coast the bit
memory of the life and dOings of
man after whom the hoodood pal:
kas been named.