by Ciji Ware
“Apparently, the hotel’s got twisted metal beams, the Tiffany glass ceiling in the lobby melted into lumps on the marble floors, and virtually everything on the interior is charred to a crisp.” Lacy’s cheeks were pink with excitement. “Oh, Amelia, I have not the slightest doubt that our Julia will make it the jewel of Nob Hill!”
“The Bay View was the jewel of Nob Hill, as far as its customers were concerned,” Amelia said reproachfully. “The Fairmont hadn’t even opened its doors by April eighteenth.”
“Well, at least the shell of that building is still standing,” Lacy countered. “The Fairmont had about three hundred rooms and the inside looked like an Italian palazzo, they say… that is before some of the floors collapsed seven feet. Julia says not just any architect could cope with the mess it’s in and do this job. I’m sure it was her degree in engineering and her certificate from L’École des Beaux Arts—and your credentials, too, by the way—that ultimately prompted the offer. When we’re done with it, it will be the grandest destination in California!”
A woman architect had been chosen to restore the glorious Fairmont!
The impact of this news began to sink in. “But, given our small staff, how in the world will Julia be able to rehabilitate two hotels at the same time, not to mention all the other projects she’s taken on?”
Lacy smiled mischievously. “I reckon she’ll head up the Fairmont operation and supervise you and Ira Hoover as lead architects on everything else, silly!”
“Oh… my… Lord,” Amelia said on a long breath, as the consequences of this amazing turn of events became clear. She would probably be assigned to work for J.D. Thayer. Exclusively. Day in, day out for the next year!
Meanwhile, Lacy clapped her hands with excitement.
“Of course, we’ll have to hire more people—if we can find them. But the point is, Amelia, the Fairmont’s owners apparently have the funds to spend on restoration, so therefore we can afford to put on more staff. It works out well for Mr. Thayer too, don’t you think? More money in Julia’s coffers means she can afford to wait for her architectural and construction management fees from the Bay View until the hotel has paying guests. Two wonderful hotels will be brought back to life, which will show the world San Francisco isn’t Pompeii, never again to rise from the ashes.”
It was all so much to absorb, Amelia thought, feeling faintly light-headed. “We’ll manage somehow, I suppose,” she murmured.
However, considering her own situation, she truly wondered how? Julia supervised everything down to the smallest detail. Would she finally start delegating to her junior associates?
There was no question but that the Fairmont commission was a huge feather in Julia Morgan’s cap, especially if she managed to get the place reopened by the first anniversary of the quake and fire.
As if echoing her thoughts, Lacy crowed, “No more having to build so many garages for our sorority sisters’ motorcars!”
“Newspapers all over America are bound to write about the architect who takes over for the murdered Stanford White,” Amelia agreed, pointing to the headline on the front page of the paper she’d brought to work. “It should give our firm a huge boost.”
“That’s right!” Lacy said, grinning, and then her face fell. “Julia will hate that, of course… the newspaper bit. She has such a fetish about reporters poking their heads into her business.” Then she brightened. “But just think of it, Amelia! You’ll likely head up the Bay View project, since you know so much about it already, don’t you imagine? And what a story that would be: two women restoring two of San Francisco’s landmark hotels! Worth a paragraph or two, don’t you think?”
Amelia nodded absently. “Well, at least this guarantees I’ll truly have a permanent position at the firm.”
Lacy gave her a startled look and then began rummaging around in a desk drawer.
“Not only are you officially on permanent staff, but you passed your licensing exam! I was so excited about the Fairmont commission, I totally forgot. Confirmation came in this morning’s post.”
She thrust a sheet of paper into Amelia’s hand. For her part, the most junior employee in the firm admitted sheepishly she’d nearly forgotten she’d taken the test a week before the quake.
Lacy laughed gaily. “Well, congratulations, Amelia! You are now a bona fide architect in the Great State of California!”
***
Julia Morgan’s conference in San Francisco with Herbert and Hartland Law, the beleaguered owners of the Fairmont Hotel, continued for the rest of the day while her staff remained busy at their drawing boards. Around four o’clock, the tiny woman walked through the door, and not five minutes later, she was followed by a familiar figure clad in a tattered opera cloak.
Amelia looked up from her drafting table, papered with the plans for the Mills College library, to see J.D. Thayer step inside the carriage barn and firmly shut the door.
“Ah, Miss Bradshaw, you’re here too, I see. Well, we might as well have everything out on the table.”
Lacy and Amelia exchanged looks.
Thayer advanced into the room, removed his cape, and flung it on a chair beside the conference table.
“So!” he demanded of Julia without preamble. “Are the rumors true?”
“Won’t you sit down, Mr. Thayer,” Julia said calmly. They each took a seat at the table.
“I heard people saying this morning that the Fairmont has found a local replacement for the architect Stanford White. Is that you, Miss Morgan?”
“Yes, it is.”
“And is it also true the Law brothers insist that you finish the restoration in time to open the Fairmont on the first anniversary of the quake?”
Amelia watched the ensuing dialogue as if watching a tennis match.
“Why, yes, Mr. Thayer. That was our agreement.”
“But that was my plan also, and I secured your services first. How do you intend that both hotels achieve the same goal?” he demanded.
Julia smiled confidently. “I don’t see this as any sort of problem,” she assured him calmly. “No one understands the site at Taylor and Jackson any better than Amelia Bradshaw here, and since you wish to reconstruct the Bay View as it was, you couldn’t be in better hands. I, of course, will supervise both the concept, design, and actual execution of the construction each step of the way.”
“And how can you be in two places at once, Miss Morgan?” J.D. eyed her steadily for a moment and then spared a brief glance for Amelia. “Miss Bradshaw is a highly intelligent and well-trained young woman, and I’m pleased she’s helping you, but she’s a novice. Building supplies are extremely scarce. Workers, even more so. Both hotels are vast and complicated projects, built on extremely steep sites.”
Julia hesitated a moment and patted some drawings sprawled across the conference table. “After the collapse of your gambling club, Mr. Thayer, I am happy to see you now appreciate the potential problems of such a difficult site.”
Amelia could hardly suppress a gasp at her employer’s veiled insult, a practice Julia Morgan had never before been heard to employ with a client. To Amelia it appeared that her employer clearly was attempting to gain a psychological advantage over her agitated client.
“All the more reason that the Bay View requires your complete attention,” J.D. snapped.
“And it will have my attention, Mr. Thayer,” Julia said, abruptly switching tactics and now adopting a soothing tone. “Miss Bradshaw has an engineering degree and graduated from architectural school with the highest honors. I personally vouch for her advanced skills. And besides,” Julia added brightly, “she grew up in the building you wish to replicate. The two hotels are four blocks apart. Miss Bradshaw and I will live on the sites as soon as practicable, so as to be able to supervise every detail. You will have the benefit of two—in your own words—highly intelligent and well-trained architects building your hotel.”
What? thought Amelia. I am to live for ten months in a soot-filled basement with J.D. T
hayer? I absolutely refuse!
She watched, dumbfounded by these rapid developments, as Julia indicated the large sheets of paper strewn across the conference table.
“We have already produced these preliminary drawings of the Bay View’s facade, which I think you will deem excellent, and will start on the final versions later today.” The architect appeared to draw up her tiny form and looked her six-foot client squarely in the eye. “And I assure you, Mr. Thayer, that I will sign off on each detail of the plans before a foot of foundation has been laid.”
J.D.’s expression revealed nothing, nor did he reply, a fact that didn’t seem to faze Julia in the slightest.
“You, sir,” she continued, “along with Miss Bradshaw, Ira Hoover, and I shall meet every other day to review the ongoing work. Together, we will rebuild your hotel to a very exacting standard.”
“By the anniversary of the quake? Just like the Fairmont?” challenged Thayer.
Julia did not immediately offer an answer. Amelia could practically hear the gears grinding in her employer’s head: Two hotels built in ten months’ time in a city surrounded by four hundred blocks of rubble, plagued by a shortage of skilled labor, and infested with the worst sort of political corruption?
Impossible! Amelia wanted to shout.
Julia Morgan leaned across the conference table and gazed at J.D. through her owlish glasses. She tapped a forefinger on Amelia’s drawings.
“You have my word on it, Mr. Thayer. Barring another Act of God, the doors to the Bay View Hotel will be open on or before April 18, 1907.”
She turned toward Amelia with a smile, adding, “Won’t they, my dear?
Chapter 12
A characteristic summer fog flowed in waves up from the bay. Wisps of chilly mist cloaked the ragged remnants of houses that once lined California Street, turning the landscape ghostly and forbidding. At the foot of Market, only a few cable cars were back in service, so Amelia decided her fastest route to her first day at the Bay View site was to walk up to Nob Hill.
During the ferry ride from Oakland, she’d tried to steel herself for her first private meeting with Morgan’s client, J.D. Thayer, on the site of the former Bay View Hotel. She also tried to brace herself for her first full view of her former neighborhood’s collapsed landmarks and blackened piles of bricks, but nothing could have prepared her for the devastation scarring the cityscape in all directions. She could see that the damage to four hundred city blocks was nothing less than cataclysmic. Little wonder that more than two hundred thousand citizens were still homeless, camped out in green wooden “earthquake shacks” lined up in long rows across the Presidio.
Even so, Amelia marveled at the extent to which the principal thoroughfares had been cleared of rubble in a few weeks’ time, by an army of ordinary citizens, pressed into service by martial law. Businessmen in suits and laborers in overalls stood side-by-side throwing debris into carts that were hauled to the shoreline, its refuse dumped in the bay.
Amelia was shocked to note the way dynamite, as well as the fire, had disfigured this neighborhood reserved for the city’s loftiest millionaires. It looked to her as if explosives had done a lot more damage than Army officials and the fire department had thus far admitted. She’d heard rumors that the newspapers had been ordered by the city fathers to emphasize the fire damage over the havoc wrecked by the earthquake, thus glossing over fears that recurring temblors might hurt the business community’s rebuilding campaign. Would the municipal officials responsible for the recovery effort ever truly know whether the earthquake or the fire had done the most damage, she wondered. Without this intelligence, how would they reconstruct the city in the safest mode possible while planning properly for calamities that might threaten in the future?
Each block she passed revealed more shocking sights. She glanced over at Sacramento Street, one hundred yards to her right, and saw that Donaldina Cameron’s Mission Home was obliterated, a solitary chimney marking its former site. The “Angel of Chinatown” and her Chinese charges had been forced by the fire to flee from their first sanctuary, the Presbyterian Church on Van Ness. Word was that they’d escaped by ferry to the seminary at San Anselmo and now had moved again, relocating in Oakland’s burgeoning Chinatown. Someday, when she had more funds, Amelia vowed to donate to Donaldina’s cause.
When she finally reached the summit of Nob Hill, the backs of her calves were aching from exertion. Breathing hard, she took in a scene of such ruin that she realized suddenly she was clutching her portmanteau so tightly her knuckles had turned white. A lingering acrid odor of burnt cinders stung her nose.
“Oh… dear… God,” she murmured, glancing around.
A lone figure with a sack on his back trod gingerly among acres of wreckage, looking for some small souvenir of a world reduced to rubble. She’d heard scavengers were everywhere, combing the debris for anything that might be of use or value. Amelia stood, dumbstruck by the stark landscape where the Crocker, Huntington, Hopkins, and Stanford mansions of the city’s railroad and banking barons had once stood. Every one of the grand structures she’d adored as a child growing up on the hill had been leveled by the fire, to the extent that the six square blocks of the once-posh district looked like a battlefield in the heart of a city. Wisps of fog swirled around the occasional blackened chimney stack, decorative column, or a set of granite front steps leading nowhere. Except for these desolate remnants, millions of dollars’ worth of palatial grandeur had been reduced to powder.
Only two buildings in this part of the city were not obliterated. The Connecticut brownstone mansion that belonged to silver baron James Flood was a shell now, minus one wall and its roof.
And across the street stood the scorched granite citadel that had been the brand new Fairmont Hotel, three days shy of its grand opening, sooty eyebrows blemishing nearly every window of its six floors. The roof was gone and through the broken windows, Amelia could see that the grand lobby was littered with mountains of rubble. Given its derelict state, the notion that the Morgan architectural firm would restore this monumental edifice and the Bay View Hotel to their former splendor by April 18, 1907—only ten months away—seemed laughable.
Amelia didn’t stop there to greet her colleagues, who were ensconced—as of the previous day—in makeshift sleeping quarters in the basement of the Fairmont, a section of the hotel that had been made marginally habitable. The office all of the Morgan team would share was a hastily constructed shed built on what had been part of the Fairmont’s grand, terraced gardens.
She turned her back on the broken hotel and continued down Taylor Street, the littered roadway that ran along the spine of the hill. Methodically, she counted the streets, fearful that she wouldn’t recognize her former home, the Bay View at the corner of Taylor and Jackson. On her right, she spied the broken smokestack from the collapsed brick cable car barn that stood sentry over a block strewn with mountains of shattered brick. The fog was even thicker here, uncoiling tendrils in all directions.
Further downhill on the Jackson Street side, only the ragged perimeter of the foundation gave any hint that either a hotel or a gambling club had ever existed on the site.
Amelia stared at the remnants of her former life and grieved for every lost doorway and chimney of the grand Victorian lady. Somewhere in the charred ruins were the carbon splinters of a cherry wood bar and a couch where Ling Lee had met her end. The table and the lighting fixture that had broken her father’s back had since dissolved into ash. She scanned the cones of black and broken plaster, some ten feet high, which looked like extinct volcanoes. Next door, the crazy, trigger-happy old lady’s three-story house and back garden fence were reduced to cinders.
Near the Taylor Street side, a few scorched, broken walls of the subterranean stables marked the spot where the Winton had been garaged. Today, the motorcar was parked in front of a slagheap of bricks. The car’s doors still had painted red crosses on them, a reminder of the vehicle’s brief life as an ambulance.
U
nlike the Fairmont, only a partial wall and some flooring remained of the Bay View’s basement. Amelia couldn’t be sure but thought she recognized the hallway that led to the stairs near the hotel kitchen where her grandfather’s impenetrable metal walk-in safe might still exist under all the wreckage.
“Oh my Lord…”
Her throat tightened at the sight of a barrier of bricks that had been part of the hotel’s foundation. Now, the rectangles were melted, misshapen blocks of clay. And no wonder. One of the firefighters she’d treated at the Presidio told her the inferno had generated temperatures up to three thousand degrees. It was as if a giant eraser had swept the Bay View Hotel and Gentlemen’s Gambling Club off the face of the earth.
Without warning, tears began to stream from Amelia eyes and spill down her cheeks. Through a blur of sadness, she saw the pitted field where her childhood home once stood and where she’d known every corridor and cupboard.
At length, she wiped her eyes with her sleeve. The game was truly over. Her father and grandfather were dead. The Bay View of her youth was no more. Three sequential cards did not a royal flush make, she considered with a sigh. It was time she got down to the business of helping to build a hotel for Julia Morgan’s client.
For a few more moments she absorbed the view, then squared her shoulders and picked her way past the heaps of wreckage in front of her, stepping down a short set of ragged cement stairs.
Amelia peered through the eerie gloom. Surely, Thayer couldn’t be living in what was left of the hotel’s basement? Yet there had been no sign of a tent or shed on his charred property. And to Amelia’s educated ear, a series of thuds echoing from somewhere below ground told her someone was at work, already clearing rubble.
She eyed the structural support holding up what remained of the garage and judged it reasonably safe to enter. After a morning of inhaling briny breezes, the odor of burnt wood and pulverized concrete inside the ruins of the Bay View stung her lungs and prompted a fit of coughing. When it subsided, she cleared her throat several times and shouted into the ash-black cavern that had comprised the old hotel’s lowest floor.