HauntBound archive · catalog record
Reported phenomena — as catalogued
Grand luxury hotel opened 1875, destroyed by 1906 fire and rebuilt 1909, where President Warren G. Harding died suddenly on August 2, 1923 — an event still surrounded by murder-by-poison rumors and persistent eighth-floor sightings.
2 New Montgomery Street, San Francisco, CA 94105
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
$$$$
Operating luxury hotel; room rates typically $250+/night. Public access to Garden Court and Pied Piper bar with food/drink purchase.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Fully accessible historic luxury hotel with elevators and step-free public areas.
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1909 · President Warren G. Harding died here August 2, 1923 · 1909 rebuild after 1906 earthquake and fire · Garden Court — surviving glass-domed dining room · Pied Piper Maxfield Parrish mural
The original Palace Hotel opened October 2, 1875, financed by William Chapman Ralston and William Sharon. Its 755 rooms made it one of the largest hotels in the world at the time, with a seven-story central court and the city's first hydraulic passenger elevators. The hotel hosted presidents, foreign royalty, and the social elite of the late 19th-century West.
The 1906 earthquake left the original Palace standing, but the fires that followed gutted the building in the days after the quake. The current Palace, designed by Trowbridge & Livingston, was constructed on the same New Montgomery and Market footprint and opened on December 19, 1909. The 1909 rebuild introduced the glass-domed Garden Court, still in use today as the hotel's signature dining room, and the Pied Piper bar with its commissioned Maxfield Parrish mural.
The building's most consequential historic event came in 1923. President Warren G. Harding, returning from a goodwill tour of Alaska, fell ill during a stop in San Francisco and checked into the presidential suite at the Palace on July 29, 1923. He died there at 7:20 PM on August 2, 1923; the official cause was given as a stroke at the time, though most modern historians have concluded the actual cause was a heart attack. Harding's wife Florence Harding refused an autopsy, which fueled decades of murder-by-poison speculation that has never been substantiated.
The Palace has changed corporate hands several times in the late 20th and early 21st centuries; Marriott has operated the property as a Luxury Collection hotel since the brand absorbed Starwood in 2016. The building remains in continuous operation and is on the National Register of Historic Places.
Sources
The most-reported activity at the Palace clusters on the eighth floor, near the presidential suite that Harding occupied at his death. According to SF Ghosts and the Haunt Ghost Tours' history of the property, guests and night staff have for decades described seeing a man in early-1920s formal dress walking the corridor near the suite — typically identified as Harding — and have reported hushed whispering that seems to come from rooms known to be unoccupied.
A secondary recurring report describes a 'Lady in Red,' said to walk a section of the eighth-floor hall and to pass through walls between rooms. The identity of the figure is unsettled in the lore; some accounts link her to a guest who is said to have died at the hotel in the 1920s, but no specific name has been consistently attached and the report functions more as a generic 'lady in red' archetype than as an identifiable spirit.
The Palace itself has historically taken a measured public stance on the legend — neither aggressively promoting nor denying the activity, with hotel concierges generally willing to discuss the Harding history. The persistence of murder-by-poison speculation around Harding's death, fed by his wife's refusal to allow an autopsy, has given the eighth-floor lore an unusually concrete narrative anchor compared to most hotel ghost stories.
Reports remain almost exclusively guest-and-staff anecdotal; no formal paranormal investigation of the building has been published, and the property does not host overnight investigations.
Notable Entities
Media Appearances
Book a stay in the Marriott Luxury Collection property whose eighth floor is the focus of the building's haunted reputation. Most rooms are well outside the Harding wing, but the hotel does not actively suppress guest inquiries about the Harding floor.
The Garden Court is the surviving social heart of the rebuilt 1909 Palace — a glass-domed dining room that is a city landmark in its own right. Public dining offers the most accessible way to experience the hotel without an overnight reservation.
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