The Huntington Hotel SF

The Huntington has held the top of it for over a century. It was designed in 1922 as a luxury apartment building and opened as a hotel in 1924. Across the street sits Huntington Park and its fountain of turtles. Overhead, the spires of Grace Cathedral. At the curb, cable cars climbing California Street to the front door. Down the hill, the city runs on hurry. Up here, time moves at the pace of a good martini.

San Francisco’s own Ken Fulk reimagined it as a grand private residence, and you feel it everywhere: a painted, vaulted ceiling, Arabella’s, a jewel box of a cocktail salon, and The Big Four, a dining room with half a century of the city’s stories behind it. There’s even a majordomo. Old school, all the way down.

Our co-star was a blonde Afghan hound, all silk and posture, and more at home in that lobby than any of us.

I shot it the way it deserves: unhurried, composed, and patient enough to let the room reveal itself. Some places you film. This one, you frame like a portrait.