The Palace Hotel, California (Images of America Series)

When it opened in 1875, the Palace Hotel was the largest and most luxurious hotel in the world, a perfect symbol of one of the most remarkable eras in San Francisco history. Built at a time when Nevada's fabulously rich silver mines were pouring millions of dollars each month into San Francisco, it typified the color and grandiose extravagances of the whole bonanza period. After the original hotel was destroyed in the 1906 earthquake and fire, a successor Palace Hotel took its place and remains one of the most prestigious hotels in San Francisco today.

Author Richard Harned, a San Francisco resident for the past 20 years, has been a history buff ever since he chose that as a major at the University of California, Berkeley. His love affair with the Palace Hotel began in 2002 when he first started giving historical tours of the hotel as a San Francisco city guide. Drawing from the archives of the Palace Hotel and the San Francisco Public Library's historic photograph collection, these images show the hotel's splendors, both architectural and personal, for the first time in any book.