Historic Landmarks of San Francisco

Mark Hopkins, eldest of the Big Four railroad magnates, built a house on Nob Hill in 1878. It has been called the last and worst of the railroad palaces. After Hopkins' death his widow continued to reside in the mansion. In November 1887 she remarried. The groom, Edward F. Searles, was a much younger man than his predecessor. In July 1891 the new Mrs. Searles herself died, leaving everything to her husband. Two years later Searles donated the house to the University of California in trust for the San Francisco Art Institute. He included $40,000 worth of art and a $100,000 endowment with the mansion. As the Mark Hopkins Institue of Art, the house became San Francisco's first major cultural center. Classes were offered in fine arts, music, and literature. Bernard Maybeck participated in the years until the 1906 earthquake. Although students and teachers were able to save many of the art works, the mansion itself was destroyed by the subsequent Great Fire. The San Francisco Art Institute survived, and is now located at Chestnut and Jones on Russian Hill.

The Mark Hopkins Art Institute stood at the southeast corner of California and Mason Streets, a site now occupied by the InterContinental Mark Hopkins Hotel. A state plaque, mounted on a retaining wall next to the courtyard entrance to the present building and facing California Street, was dedicated October 20, 1961, by the California State Park Commission, the San Francisco Art Institute, the Mark Hopkins Hotel, and the California Historical Society.