Cable car tracks climb past grand hotel fronts and apartment blocks on the crest of the hill.
What Nob Hill looks like
The California Street cable car runs east and west from California and Market to Van Ness Avenue, climbing toward the top of the hill. Its double track converges into a single stub-end track at the terminus. Hotels stand along California Street at the top, and the and the face each other across the street. stands across Taylor Street from , which fills the block between Taylor and Cushman Streets.
Sacramento Street drops steeply away from the top of the hill between apartment blocks, with the bay at the foot of the street. The Fairmont's main building has nine storeys and a 29-storey tower, and the Mark Hopkins rises 19 storeys. Grace Cathedral's towers stand 174 feet above the street, and its central spire rises 247 feet. The cathedral is built of ferroconcrete.
Apartment blocks fill the streets between the hotels, with bay windows and iron fire escapes on their stucco fronts. The at 1000 Mason Street is an eleven-storey building from 1926, entered through a courtyard between stone pedestals with lamps. The Flood Mansion, a brownstone house with a central stair, is now the headquarters of the .
The cars run on asphalt with the rails set into the roadway. The Powell lines cross California Street at the crest and turn into Jackson and Washington Streets. Passengers stand on the running boards of the cars.
Shot in Nob Hill
In Bullitt, Johnny Ross takes a cab to the Mark Hopkins Hotel on arriving in San Francisco. The cab passes the Fairmont, crosses California Street and turns into the hotel's courtyard. Family Plot filmed an abduction scene in Grace Cathedral in 1975.
Vertigo, 1958
Brocklebank Apartments
This is Madeleine Elster's home in Vertigo, played by Kim Novak. The building was completed in 1926 and has eleven storeys. Street View
Hotel, 1983
Fairmont Hotel
Played The St. Gregory Hotel
Establishing shots of the Fairmont's exterior stood in for the fictional St. Gregory Hotel in the ABC series Hotel, and some pilot interiors were filmed inside the hotel. When the series was picked up, a three-quarter-scale replica of its lobby was built at Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank. Street View
What Nob Hill can double for
East Lake Shore Drive in Chicago, Illinois
The apartment buildings along East Lake Shore Drive were designed between 1912 and 1929, with ornament drawn from the historical styles of England, France and Italy. Their period overlaps the California Street hotel blocks of the 1910s and 1920s. The flat lakefront gives Chicago away in any wide shot. No cable car runs there, so frame tight on the facades. Try searching lakefront apartment buildings now.
Bunker Hill was a popular film noir setting in the 1940s and 1950s, and its peak carried lavish two-storey Victorian houses. A tight frame of the hilltop with one of its older Victorian houses can stand in for that look. Nob Hill's California Street cable car tracks give it away in any wide shot, so keep the tracks and the modern towers out of frame. Try searching hilltop Victorian houses now.
.jpg)
