The grand Victorian fairy castle home of railroad baron Mark Hopkins once stood proudly on the southeastern peak of Nob Hill in San Francisco.
Mark Hopkins, a co-founder of the Central Pacific Railroad, built this dream home for his wife, Mary.
Completed in 1878, the mansion boasted a towering tower that offered the highest viewpoint in the city at the time.
In fact, the famous photographer Eadweard Muybridge captured a panoramic photograph of San Francisco from this very spot in 1877.
After Mary’s passing in 1891, her second husband, Edward Francis Searles, inherited the mansion along with a vast $70 million estate.
Two years later, in 1893, Searles generously donated the building and its grounds to the San Francisco Art Association, which later became the San Francisco Art Institute.
The mansion was then known as the Mark Hopkins Institute of Art and was valued at $600,000.
Despite surviving the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, the mansion ultimately fell victim to the devastating three-day fire that ensued.
Today, while the physical structure may be gone, the legacy of the Mark Hopkins mansion lives on in the history of San Francisco.
