The California Street Hill or Nob Hill as it is more popularly known is 338 feet above sea level at the highest point, at the intersection of California and Mason Streets. 

In the 1870s and '80s, after Andrew Hallidie's cable cars made the hill accessible, five highly competitive San Francisco businessmen built mansions at the top.  They included the four Railroad Kings who had built the Central Pacific Railroad and backed its extension eastward to meet the Union Pacific near Promontory, Utah.  They were Collis P. Huntington (1821-1900), Charles Crocker (1822-1888), Mark Hopkins (1814-1878), and Leland Stanford (1824-1893), names that are still well known in California. Stanford endowed the university (named for his late son) in Palo Alto. The Huntington family built commuter rails around Los  Angeles.  The Crockers built one of the state's largest banks.  Hopkins' name lives on in the hotel named for him, as well as Huntington and Stanford's names. 

None of these four men's houses survived the 1906 fire following the earthquake.  Only the fifth businessman's house, a brownstone built by James Flood, survived -- and then only the structure, but not the contents -- as well as the Fairmont Hotel across the street. (See map at right.)    The Fairmont exists today.  The Flood mansion is used by the Pacific Union Club whose members define The Establishment.

Big Charles Crocker, the most overbearing of the group (his company was the Central Pacific's prime contractor), wanted the entire block bounded by Taylor and Jones Streets for his digs.  Nicholas Yung (originally Jung), a German undertaker who was there first refused to sell.  By 1877, after Crocker had obtained control of all the land around Yung's house, he built a 30-foot high wooden wall around Yung's house to block his view.  It quickly became known as the Spite Fence.

Charles Crocker's "Spite Fence" around Nicholas Yung's small house.  The fence has been colorized in this old monotint. Yung's chimneys can be seen sticking above the fence.  Note the braces that were necessary to hold the wall up. Collis Huntington's house is in foreground.  At the time of photo, James Flood's mansion had not yet been built. 

After the fire, 30 years later

In the city below, the Spite Fence inspired outrage.  In the tough economic times of July, 1877, Dennis Kearney, an Irish immigrant and rabble rouser, led his Workingmen's Association to the top of Nob Hill where he promised to tear the wall down by November if it weren't gone sooner.  Nicholas Yung wanted no part of Kearney's cause.  Kearney opposed Crocker as much because the Pacific Mail (also controlled by Crocker) used Chinese labor, "depriving" waterfront jobs to his own kind of immigrants.  The following excerpt, from a work of historical fiction, describes the scene as viewed from Chinatown: 

AT THIS LOCATION, "1150" CALIFORNIA STREET, NOW THE SITE OF THE CHOIR, STOOD WILLIAM H. CROCKER'S QUEEN ANNE STYLE MANSION (1888).  THE DEUXIEME EMPIRE - ITALIAN VILLA STYLE MANSION (1877) OF HIS FATHER, CHARLES CROCKER, WAS AT THE N.W. CORNER OF CALIFORNIA & TAYLOR. BOTH BUILDING WERE DESTROYED IN THE EARTHQUAKE AND FIRE OF 1906.  SUBSEQUENTLY, THE CROCKER FAMILY, IN CONSULTATION WITH THE RT. REV. WILLIAM FORD NICHOLS, SECOND BISHOP OF CALIFORNIA, DONATED THIS ENTIRE BLOCK AS THE SITE FOR GRACE CATHEDRAL.  THE CORNERSTONE WAS LAID ON JANUARY 24, 1910. ...

Spite Fence: Concerning Charles Crocker, His Fence, and the Troubles of 1877

Jackson Lin's account

That was when I got the crazy idea to climb Nob Hill in order to see Crocker's spite fence.  I had met Charles Crocker before, when I worked as a translator for the Bank of California.  I was hired because he was interested in the China trade.  A huge man, he displayed no airs and did not seem any more brusque with me than he was with any of his other employees -- which meant that he was thoroughly and crudely domineering though ingenuously so.  "They don't understand," he said, concerning the white laborers' objections to hiring Chinese.  "Chinese labor elevates the white worker, gives him a better and higher level of status and pay.  If it weren't for the Chinese being so willing to take on the meanest jobs, the white man would have to fill these positions.  Chinese labor is a blessing to the white workingman, if the damn fool would only realize it."  At that time I said nothing and went on with translating his negotiations with the Sam Yup Company.  Now the men he sought to "elevate" wanted to spit at his benevolence.

...That night I put on the Western suit I would wear sometimes for work, coiled my queue underneath my hat, and in the dark before dawn I made my way up California Street.  In the safety of darkness I would be taken for a white man, perhaps a capitalist rising before dawn to oversee his great enterprise.  Hardly anyone stirred at that hour, and I reached the top of the hill shortly.

From Cannibal Eliot and the Lost Histories of San Francisco by Hilton Obenzinger, San Francisco: Mercury House, 1993.  (ISBN 1-56279-047-1)

Mark Hopkins Hotel (southeast corner California and Mason)where Mark Hopkins' house stood before 1906.  A landmark best known for entertainment from the Top o' the Mark.

The James Flood mansion (northwest corner California and Mason) is now the Pacific Union Club.

Collis Huntington's house is now the site of site of Huntington Park, a pleasant place to read during lunch or while waiting for a ride home after work.  Leland's Stanford's house became the Stanford Court Hotel, at the southwest corner of Powell and California.  The Huntington Hotel, another of San Francisco premier hostelies, is across the street from the park on the California Street side.

For more pictures around Nob Hill, on streets north and south of California Street, go here.

For a look at the cable car barn and Cable Car Museum, go here.