OpenStreetMap (new tab)

Google Map (new tab)

Google Streetview (new tab)

Overview

James Sutton Graham (1824-1862) shipped the prefabricated constituents of this four-story hotel from Baltimore, MD, on 04/19/1849. Five months later, it arrived to be assembled at its Kearny Street and Pacific Avenue location. Graham made it to San Francisco during 1849 and was elected a City Alderman on the following 01/08/1850. (This newcomer won his alderman seat with the most votes cast in the election.) The city underwent intense social flux during the earliest stages of the Gold Rush, as Graham's sudden political rise would attest. (See Angus MacFarlane, Found SF.org, "Naming of Haight Street, Part 3: Of Maps and Men," accessed 01/06/2017.) Graham's enterprise, Graham Gray Company, would sell the hotel in a year to the County and City of San Francisco and to the State of California for governmental use.

Building History

The Graham House was, along with the Ward House, one of the earliest "luxury" hotels in San Francisco, CA. By 03/1851, Graham's company had leased the hotel to the California Supreme Court for its use. The web site of the California Supreme Court Historical Society stated: "On Saturday, March 2, [Clerk of the California Supreme Court] Thorpe paid the Graham Gray Co. $1,000 for court accommodations for the month, and on Monday the 4th of March, the court “organized” itself in the multi-storied “Graham House” — formerly a hotel, and soon also to house San Francisco City Hall — on the northeast corner of Kearny Street at Pacific Avenue." (See Jake Dear and Levin, "Historic Sites of the California Supreme Court," accessed 01/10/2017.)

A month later, and without a whiff of conflict of interest, Alderman Graham sold the hotel to the City and County of San Francisco for use as a capacious governmental center for the exorbitant sum of $100,000. The city spent an additional $50,000 to remodel the hotel into a functioning city hall, courthouse and jail. According to a historical web site on the San Francisco Police Department, "Executive and judicial officers were placed on the upper floors. A police office and jail 'suitable for years to come' were placed on the bottom floor." (See San Francisco Police Department, "150 Years of History," accessed 01/06/2017.) Historian Zoeth S. Eldredge stated of the building in his 1912 history of San Francisco: "The Graham house, a four story wooden edifice lined on two sides by continuous balconies, was imported bodily from Baltimore and set up on the northwest corner of Kearny and Pacific streets. It was bought by the council, April 1, 1850, for a city hall, for the sum of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. The building succumbed to the fire of June 1851." (See Zoeth S. Eldredge, The Beginnings of San Francisco: From the Expedition of Anza, 1774, to the City Charter of April 15, 1850: with Biographical and Other Notes, [San Francisco : Z.S. Eldredge, 1912], volume 2, p. 585.)

Interestingly, of three sources consulted, each reported a different location for the Graham House. The SFPD site indicated that the hotel was located at "Pacific and Montgomery streets." A web site of the California Supreme Court Historical Society indicated that it was sited "...on the northeast corner of Kearny Street at Pacific Avenue." (See Jake Dear and Levin, "Historic Sites of the California Supreme Court," California Supreme Court Historical Society Yearbook, vol. 4, 1998-1999, p. 63,accessed 01/06/2017.) The Eldredge book cited above stated it to have been on the northwest corner of Kearny and Pacific.

Demolition

The Graham House was destroyed by fire on 06/22/1851. This fire necessitated that the City and County of San Francisco government relocate rapidly to other quarters. The second city hall moved to the Jenny Lind Theater, at Kearny Street near Washington Street.

PCAD id: 15498