Living in Nob Hill, San Francisco

Grace Cathedral's twin spires and rose window cap the crest of Nob Hill, an Episcopal cathedral built over decades on the site of the Crocker family mansion that burned in the 1906 fire. The Fairmont Hotel finally opened exactly a year after that same fire gutted its nearly finished interior, and it still anchors the hill's northeast corner across California Street from the Mark Hopkins, a 1920s tower whose Top of the Mark lounge looks out over the whole city. The California Street cable car climbs the hill from the Financial District and crests where the Powell-Mason and Powell-Hyde lines cross it, the only public transit that reaches Nob Hill's summit; no BART or Muni Metro rail line runs through the neighborhood, and residents rely on cable cars, buses, or a walk down the hill to reach a train. Prewar apartment towers and a scattering of grand hotels fill the blocks around the cathedral, most built up in the decades after the neighborhood's original mansion row burned.

Those same slopes mean a genuine climb from the flatter streets below, and a walk home after dinner downtown routinely means tackling one of the city's steepest grades.

Nob Hill's rents track its history and its views, a quiet, historic address near the top of the city that trades a rail stop for a cable car ride and a walk.