deckhand pulled up the gangway. Ezra Kemp might reside to the north, but the lumber magnate was obviously hell bent on fleeing the city any way he could—and saving his own hide.
***
The ferry set off east across the bay while Amelia headed west, back into the grim remains of the city, weaving her way past chunks of masonry and twisted trolley tracks and setting out for the Bay View atop Nob Hill. Despite the devastation surrounding her, she was buoyed by the hope that her father was alive. She hurried onward, the crowds flowing in the opposite direction like a raging river toward the bay.
Soon she began the arduous climb up California Street. The higher she scaled the incline, the less quake damage she witnessed. Several open-air horseless carriages, packed with sightseers, whizzed by. She was amazed, in fact, by the carnival atmosphere prevailing in San Francisco’s upper-class district, some of whose residents were heading downhill to enjoy firsthand observations of the collapsed docks and shattered structures along the waterfront.
A boy interrupted his game of hopscotch and pointed at her bloodstained shirtwaist. “Hey, lady, what’s it like downtown? Musta been pretty bad down there, huh? Seen any dead bodies? Did ya know your hair’s all white? Those are some mighty nasty cuts on yer forehead.”
Amelia ignored him and sped toward the top of the hill. Panting by the time she finally reached the summit, she turned right onto Taylor Street and paused to catch her breath.
“Oh, thank goodness…” she murmured.
Her favorite cluster of Victorian-style mansions belonging to the Big Four railroad barons, Crocker, Huntington, Stanford, and Hopkins, along with the new Fairmont Hotel—all built on the hill’s foundation of bedrock—appeared relatively unharmed. Alarmingly, though, bells on the fire trucks were clanging a quarter-mile away in Chinatown.
Four blocks farther down the crest of Nob Hill, she caught a comforting glimpse of one of the Bay View’s turrets. Just the sight of the place was reassuring, but, as she drew nearer, her hope soon turned to horror.
In contrast to other buildings on Taylor Street, every chimney of her grandfather’s hotel had crumbled, leaving jagged holes along the massive shingled roof and shattering windows and walls on the Jackson Street side. Why had Charlie Hunter’s pride and joy suffered such terrible damage and not other buildings in this neighborhood rooted in Nob Hill’s sheet of basalt and serpentine? Why was the grand old lady listing treacherously to the east, appearing as if it might tumble down the hill toward the bay?
And then the truth hit her full force.
“Oh God! No! ” screamed Amelia, limping faster down the incline of Jackson Street.
The recent addition of the gambling club built by Ezra Kemp and J.D. Thayer on the downhill side of the property had completely collapsed, taking with it some of the older sections of the original building and severely damaging its roof. As she’d learned from Lacy Fiske, the designer hired by Thayer and Kemp to build the annex to the hotel was a mere dandy in spats that barely knew his architectural ABC’s, let alone how to calculate the load-bearing requirements of a structure built on a hill. Surveying the extensive wreckage, Amelia felt sick to her stomach.
Bruised and battered hotel guests wandered aimlessly in the street or sat on paving stones, looking like lost children as they watched her pass by. At the bottom of the hill, the nine blocks of Chinatown had been reduced by the upheaval into piles of oversized kindling. Orange pockmarks of flame dotted the landscape below.
Amelia lifted her skirts and hobbled down a narrow slate path toward the remains of the newer building, her aching muscles protesting each step. She searched for safe entry into the annex that had suffered such terrible damage, peering through a yawning hole in a wall that had—for the few weeks of its existence—kept prying eyes from
***
The ferry set off east across the bay while Amelia headed west, back into the grim remains of the city, weaving her way past chunks of masonry and twisted trolley tracks and setting out for the Bay View atop Nob Hill. Despite the devastation surrounding her, she was buoyed by the hope that her father was alive. She hurried onward, the crowds flowing in the opposite direction like a raging river toward the bay.
Soon she began the arduous climb up California Street. The higher she scaled the incline, the less quake damage she witnessed. Several open-air horseless carriages, packed with sightseers, whizzed by. She was amazed, in fact, by the carnival atmosphere prevailing in San Francisco’s upper-class district, some of whose residents were heading downhill to enjoy firsthand observations of the collapsed docks and shattered structures along the waterfront.
A boy interrupted his game of hopscotch and pointed at her bloodstained shirtwaist. “Hey, lady, what’s it like downtown? Musta been pretty bad down there, huh? Seen any dead bodies? Did ya know your hair’s all white? Those are some mighty nasty cuts on yer forehead.”
Amelia ignored him and sped toward the top of the hill. Panting by the time she finally reached the summit, she turned right onto Taylor Street and paused to catch her breath.
“Oh, thank goodness…” she murmured.
Her favorite cluster of Victorian-style mansions belonging to the Big Four railroad barons, Crocker, Huntington, Stanford, and Hopkins, along with the new Fairmont Hotel—all built on the hill’s foundation of bedrock—appeared relatively unharmed. Alarmingly, though, bells on the fire trucks were clanging a quarter-mile away in Chinatown.
Four blocks farther down the crest of Nob Hill, she caught a comforting glimpse of one of the Bay View’s turrets. Just the sight of the place was reassuring, but, as she drew nearer, her hope soon turned to horror.
In contrast to other buildings on Taylor Street, every chimney of her grandfather’s hotel had crumbled, leaving jagged holes along the massive shingled roof and shattering windows and walls on the Jackson Street side. Why had Charlie Hunter’s pride and joy suffered such terrible damage and not other buildings in this neighborhood rooted in Nob Hill’s sheet of basalt and serpentine? Why was the grand old lady listing treacherously to the east, appearing as if it might tumble down the hill toward the bay?
And then the truth hit her full force.
“Oh God! No! ” screamed Amelia, limping faster down the incline of Jackson Street.
The recent addition of the gambling club built by Ezra Kemp and J.D. Thayer on the downhill side of the property had completely collapsed, taking with it some of the older sections of the original building and severely damaging its roof. As she’d learned from Lacy Fiske, the designer hired by Thayer and Kemp to build the annex to the hotel was a mere dandy in spats that barely knew his architectural ABC’s, let alone how to calculate the load-bearing requirements of a structure built on a hill. Surveying the extensive wreckage, Amelia felt sick to her stomach.
Bruised and battered hotel guests wandered aimlessly in the street or sat on paving stones, looking like lost children as they watched her pass by. At the bottom of the hill, the nine blocks of Chinatown had been reduced by the upheaval into piles of oversized kindling. Orange pockmarks of flame dotted the landscape below.
Amelia lifted her skirts and hobbled down a narrow slate path toward the remains of the newer building, her aching muscles protesting each step. She searched for safe entry into the annex that had suffered such terrible damage, peering through a yawning hole in a wall that had—for the few weeks of its existence—kept prying eyes from
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