Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
THE RITZ-CARLTON,
SAN FRANCISCO
. ,
The great earthquake fires that destroyed much of San Francisco in 1906 comprised perhaps the
most significant event of its kind in the history of the world. What those 60 seconds of tremendous
shocks did not destroy, the subsequent fires burned. No one could tally an accurate account of the
dead but casualty estimates run as high as 2,000 to 3,000 souls. Although felt all the way to Los
Angeles, southern Oregon, and central Nevada, this disaster was not able to completely wipe out
the city.
Citizens quickly began to recover from the devastation by rebuilding. It is perhaps due to the
massive insurance claims that brought this western city's and Nob Hill's attractions to the attention
of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company.
Nob Hill was named for the numerous nabobs who congregated here. A
nabob
is an Indian
word for someone who has made a great fortune or is a very rich and powerful person. The Gold
Rush produced a number of those, and they all flocked together on the same hillside. Average
people concluded that the area was Nob Hill, and the name stuck.
After the quake, Met Life built an enormous office building on Nob Hill in 1909. This served
as their foothold on the financial district of the city and their western headquarters until it was sold
in 1973.
Cogswell Technical College bought the Met Life Western Headquarters to expand their
educational operations. The college was named for Dr. Henry Daniel Cogswell, one of the city's
first millionaires from the Gold Rush. Descended from Alfred the Great and Charlemagne, his
family moved to America in 1635 from England. When he arrived to San Francisco in 1849, Dr.
Cogswell chose to practice dentistry, rather than mining. Amassing a fortune through work and
investments in mining stocks, he set up a private high school to offer technical training. Grow-
ing into a technical college, the school had originally occupied facilities in the Mission District,
gradually growing into larger buildings. In 1985, the college moved to Cupertino and, in 1993,
the campus was located in Sunnyvale, where today it focuses on digital and software engineering
for television and movie productions.
After several years of sitting idle, and following a complete four-year renovation, this historic
Nob Hill landmark reopened as The Ritz-Carlton, San Francisco in April 1991. This neoclassical
landmark is a renovation of one of the city's architectural treasures.
