Hotel St. Francis - San Francisco

The Hotel St. Francis is located on Powell Street, on Union Square, in San Francisco, California.  It opened on March 21, 1904 and quickly became one of the city's most luxurious spots.  On April 18, 1906 the San Francisco Earthquake and subsequent fires damaged much of the city.  The hotel suffered no structural damage, but the fires gutted the building.  Work began almost immediately on the hotel and it reopened in 1907, followed by the addition of a third wing in 1908.  A young terrier, named Francis, who survived the fire, became the hotel's symbol of survival in the post earthquake years.  Over the decades the hotel played host to several infamous events, including one of the era's most famous Hollywood scandals. On September 5, 1921 screen comedian Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle and his entourage rode from Hollywood to the St. Francis for a Labor Day weekend party.  During the festivities, held in rooms 1221, 1220 and 1219, young actress Virginia Rappe took ill and died.  Although she and Arbuckle may have had a consentual moment, the press thought otherwise.  Arbuckle, who was sans wife at the affair, was accused, among other things, of both raping her with a bottle, and crushing her to death during sex.  Although, this most certainly wasn't true, he still wound up sitting through three trials before he was finally acquitted.  His career was dead, however, and he spent the next decade directing, writing, and trying to get a job in Hollywood.  In the same suite of rooms that Arbuckle's bad judgment cost him a career, another tragedy played out on October 23, 1950.  Entertainer Al Jolsen, fresh from a grueling tour entertaining the troops in Korea, had flown to San Francisco to do a guest spot on the Bing Crosby radio show.  After dinner he went to his rooms at the St. Francis with long-time friends Harry Akst and Martin Fried, and after a few hands of gin rummy he began complaining of indigestion.  The doctor was called - two eventually showed up - and exchanged pleasantries with the patient as he sat in bed.  Suddenly, he reached out and said "Oh, I'm going."  He had died of a heart attack.  The rooms that Arbuckle and Jolsen stayed in are still open and can be booked by curious guests. Flash forward nearly 25 years to September 22, 1975.  As President Gerald Ford was leaving the St. Francis a shot was fired by Sara Jane Moore.  She bought a .38 caliber revolver earlier in the day and was waiting in the crowd outside the hotel when the president left.  She hadn't calibrated the site when she purchased the gun, and her shot narrowly missed.  She attempted a second shot but was knocked to the ground by a former marine in the crowd.  The shot went wild, hitting a taxi driver.  Moore would serve 32 years of a life sentence for her attempted assassination.  The bullet hole can still be seen on the wall outside the hotel, just above the ATM machine.  Over the years the guest list at the St. Francis has grown enormous, from Presidents and world leaders, to entertainers and sports figures.  The hotel is now known as the Westin St. Francis.

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