The Red Light on Nob Hill

Open for business: the restored entrance of the Huntington Hotel. For decades, the Huntington Hotel was San Francisco’s hideout for everyone from Marlene Dietrich to Truman Capote. After a five-year blackout and a grand renovation, its neon crown has flickered back to life By Ben Ryder Howe Is San Francisco a world-class city? It’s a question its residents hate, and with good reason. San Francisco has more private wealth than Boston, Chicago, Houston, Seattle, and Washington, D.C., combined, and its G.D.P. is larger than Dallas’s. Many consider it America’s most beautiful city. But if it is a world-class city, what is its world-class hotel? The hotel that doesn’t just provide a place to bed down but reflects the city’s grandest vision of itself—a Carlyle or Claridge’s or, in the case of a smaller city like San Francisco, a miniature grande dame like the Beau-Rivage Genève. READ ON