1876 Carleton Watkins View of Court Palace Hotel, San Francisco, Taber Mount 8 x 7/8. Taber Publisher, San Francisco, California. Court, Palace Hotel, S. Printing out paper on remnant of plain mount. 8 x 4 7/8 inches. 8 3/8 x 5 1/4 inches. Rich tonal image, light rubbing/aging, mount is trimmed with loss at corners/edges and has been removed from larger mount at some point. Uncommon Carelton Watkins early view showing the court if the newly opened Palace Hotel in San Francisco, California. Erected by banker William Chapman Ralston, this opulent gift to the city was completed and opened two months after his untimely death following the collaps of his economic empire. This image, which is usually found as a stereoview, shows the less common restaurant end of the courtyard while most views show the carriage entrance. Watkins applied his “majestic” eye to this cavernous seven story atrium with all the visual acuity that he applied to his views of nature. In the foreground at the bottom of the image is the tip of a carriage arriving with a slightly blurred horse head. The opulent building and interior was said to rival the most magnificent of European hotels and remained an important landmark and destination until its demise during the great earthquake of 1906. It was later replaced with a smaller, scaled down version. He created a remarkable documentation of this natural wonder leading to its designation as a National Park. Isaiah West Taber was another San Francisco institution opening his own studio there in 1871 and somewhat the better business man than his contemporary Carleton Watkins. Acquiring Watkins’ print and negative stock following the photographer’s bankruptcy in 1881, he managed to successfully sell many of Watkins’ early views of the west and California with his own studio credit, rarely if ever crediting Watkins. Ironically, when the 1906 earthquake struck, it also destroyed Taber’s own negative and print collection including his holdings of Carleton Watkins works reported as eighty tons of portrait negatives and twenty tons of view negatives. We are currently listing a diverse selection of items. We cannot mark merchandise values below value or mark items as gifts. And International government regulations prohibit this. Thank you for your understanding and cooperation. Contact should be made in three days. Txzj pxzj229 txzj-4 txzj1.