Hudson's Bay Company Headquarters

In the early 1840s the mighty Hudson's Bay Company maintained an outpost in then-tiny San Francisco. Located on a 100-vara lot (vara is an obsolete Spanish unit of measurement roughly analogous to a yard), the structure was built by Jacob P. Leese, who used it as a trading post. It was a two-story wood frame building with dormer windows and a high, sloping roof which faced south. At the time it was the City's largest building.

Leese sold the structure to the Hudson's Bay Company for $4,600 in 1841. The company's agent, William Glen Rae, was a son-in-law of Dr. John McLaughlin, the powerful Hudson's Bay Company factor at Fort Vancouver. Described as "generous and hospitable," Rae was nonetheless beset with business problems which led to his suicide in 1845. The following year the agency closed down its San Francisco office and the property was sold to the firm of Mellus and Howard. In 1850 the building became the US Hotel. That same year workmen, digging a sewer on Commercial, discovered a coffin containing the remains of William Glen Rae, who had been buried in a garden adjacent to the building.

The Hudson's Bay Company office was in a building which stood on the west side of Montgomery Street between Commercial and Sacramento Streets. The site is now taken by a modern office building, 505 Montgomery. The plaque, however, is located at 605 Commercial Street, across the alley.