THE MARK HOPKINS MANSION

“Your city is remarkable not only for its beauty. It is also, of all the cities in the United States, the one whose name, the world over, conjures up the most visions and more than any other, incites one to dream.”

-Georges Pompidou

You have never done carpentry work before, but you’ve always worked well with your hands and considered yourself a quick study.

You join a work crew with a master carpenter as your foreman. Any apprehension you had about lack of experience melts away when you meet the rest of the crew — three preachers, two lawyers, three physicians, a shoemaker, a barber, and five fellow bookkeepers.

It’s hard work, but it pays well. San Francisco is growing fast, the hills and valleys filling with immigrants rich and poor, settlers and prospectors and businessmen. Scots and Irish arrive first in drives, followed by Chinese and Poles, Swedes, Russians.

By the late 1860s, you’re a master carpenter — and a foreman — yourself, directing the construction of row houses on Portrero Hill for newly emancipated African-American southerners heading west for work. You’ve started a family and settled into a small house on Nob Hill, two blocks down Mason Street from Grace Cathedral.

In 1878, you guide cable cars up and down Nob Hill, framing the grand Mark Hopkins mansion, a few blocks from your home.

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