MARKET  STREET page 4 of 20 THE INTERSECTION OF MARKET, MONTGOMERY, POST and NEW MONTGOMERY STREETS

On this old postcard, the Hobart Building dwarfed everything on the block.  But these days, the Hobart is dwarfed by... oh, pretty much everything!

This second version of the Palace Hotel went up shortly after the 1906 quake and fire destroyed the original.  President Warren G Harding died here, a claim that no other hotel can make.

The Crocker Building was one of Market Street’s many flatirion-style structures.  (Flatirons are wedge-shaped buildings, built to conform to the pointy lots created by Market Street cutting diagonally across downtown.) Many flatirons survive today, but the Crocker Building was torn down in the 1960s.  Today, in its place stands McKesson Plaza, complete with high-rise office building.

"Didn't you used to be taller?"  Note how the current Wells Fargo Building, located just off the Crocker Galleria shopping mall, consists of just the bottom two floors of the old First National Bank building.

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