[6] The original Palace Hotel was built by San Francisco banker and entrepreneur William Chapman Ralston, who heavily depended on his shaky banking empire to help finance the $5 million project.

[7][8] The skylighted open center of the building featured a Grand Court overlooked by seven stories of white columned balconies which served as an elegant carriage entrance.

[10][11] Traveling throughout Mexico and Southern California and reportedly drinking excessively, the monarch suffered a stroke in Santa Barbara[12] and was rushed back to San Francisco.

[10][13][14] Financed primarily by Bank of California co-founder William Ralston, it offered many innovative modern conveniences including an intercom system and four oversized hydraulic elevators called lifting rooms.

[16] Its general effect at night, when brilliantly lighted, is superb; its furniture, rooms and appointments are all fine, but then it tells you all over it was built to "whip all creation," and the millions of its lucky owner enabled him to triumph."

[18] Although the hotel survived the initial damage from the early morning April 18, 1906, San Francisco earthquake, by late that afternoon it had been consumed by the subsequent fires.

Notably, tenor Enrico Caruso (who had sung the role of Don José in Carmen the night before) was staying in the hotel at the time of the quake, and swore never to return to the city.

The urban legend is Caruso, "stood in his nightshirt holding a personally autographed photograph of President Theodore Roosevelt and demanded special treatment.

[20] A modest two-story frame structure, the "Baby" Palace was opened with considerable fanfare on November 17, 1906, just seven months after the earthquake and fire had devastated the city.

Within a decade of its construction, the building had already been replaced by a four-story brick apartment block built in 1916, which still occupies much of the northwest corner lot at Post and Leavenworth streets where the "Baby" Palace Hotel had briefly stood.

[22][23] Completely rebuilt from the ground up, the "New" Palace Hotel opened on December 19, 1909, and quickly resumed the role of its namesake predecessor as an important San Francisco landmark as well as host to many of the city's great events.

Equally famous was the "Pied Piper" Bar located just off the gleaming polished marble lobby, which was dominated by Maxfield Parrish's 16-by-6-foot (4.9 by 1.8 m), 250-pound (110 kg) painting of the same name.

In 1923, Warren G. Harding's term as president ended suddenly when he died at the Palace Hotel, in Room 8064, an eighth floor suite that overlooks Market Street.

The hotel's owners controversially removed the famed Pied Piper mural on March 23, 2013, for sale at a planned auction at Christie's.