F I R S TP R E V193NEXTLAST

Garden Court, Palace Hotel
In 1875 William Ralston built the Palace Hotel to be the finest in the country. Sparing no expense and opulent beyond any other, it was furnished with highly-polished mahogany, teak, ebony, and rosewood. The vast inner marble-paved courtyard could accommodate horse-drawn carriages and was covered by an amber-colored glass dome, seven stories above. At 800 rooms it was the largest hotel in the country at the time. The Palace was destroyed in the fire of 1906 and restored three years later. The Garden Court shown here features 80,000 panes of intricate leaded glass and the Palace's bar features Maxfield Parrish's 'Pied Piper' painting. Two head's of state have died here, Hawaii's King Kalakaua and Warren G. Harding, who some believed was poisoned by his wife because of his affair and illegitimate child with Nan Britton. Hopefully Harding was not poisoned by the Green Goddess salad dressing which was created in the Palace Hotel in 1923 to honor an actor and hotel guest who was performing in a stage play of the same name.
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