"No more than there is of Rincon Hill, over there at the southern corner of Yerba Buena Cove." I was considerably mollified by his appreciation. "It was the best residence quarter of the fifties, but the 'unkindest cut' of Second Street, which brought no good to anyone, not even its commercial promoters, left it a place of the 'butt ends of streets,' as Stevenson says, and inaccessible, square-edged, perpendicular lots whose only value lies buried underneath them. I fear its scars can never be remedied."
"You have several hills left," he consoled me as his eye traveled along the broken western skyline. "What is their role in this historic drama?"
"The ridge running down the peninsula is the San Miguel Range, crowned by Twin Peaks, with the Mission at its foot. Nob Hill, next, acquired its name in the sixties, when the bonanza and railroad kings erected their residences there. Before the fire"—I felt my color rising, but there was no shade of change in my companion's expression—"the mansions of the 'Big Four' of the Central Pacific—Huntington, Hopkins, Stanford and Crocker—and the Comstock millionaires—Flood, Fair and others—filled with magnificent works of craftsmen and artists, had more than local fame."
"From this distance, with three of the largest buildings in the city, the hill hardly seems to have fallen from its high estate," he observed.
"You are quite right. It still lives up to its name, for the Fairmont
Hotel and the Stanford Apartments, christened for two of its former
magnates, and the brown-stone Flood mansion, remodeled for the
Pacific-Union Club, are no whit less nobby than their predecessors."
"The next hill?" He turned his gaze to the houses perched on the top and clinging part way down its steep sides.
"A little graveyard where the Russian gold-seekers were laid to rest gave its name. It is now the home of the artists and the artistic."
"A city built on the water and the hills, and rebuilt on the ashes of seven fires," he commented. "It is almost incomprehensible." After a moment's pause: "How much of the city was burned by the last fire?"
I glanced sharply at him. There was no shade of irony in his tone and his face showed only sincerity.
"All that you can see, from the fringe of wharves at the waterfront to the top of the hills and down into the valley beyond, except these houses here at our feet, saved by the Italians with wine-soaked blankets, and a few on the heights of Russian Hill."