The story of the legendary Cliff House in San Francisco can be called amazing and distressing. The first Cliff House settled in the late 50s of the 19th century right above the coast of the ocean in an incredibly picturesque and exciting place in the west of a magnificent city. Since then, it has been rebuilt five times for various reasons – from the usual reconstruction to the repair of serious damage.

Six years before the 20th century, Adolf Sutro, a successful engineer, erected the third, most famous and photographed “reincarnation” of the house. It was a luxurious Victorian mansion of seven floors with a carefully thought out, harmonious structure, thanks to which he received the nickname “Gingerbread House”.

Cliff House was also the place where important historical events unfolded, among which there were several shipwrecks. One of such water accidents, which occurred in 1887, caused great damage to the building due to dynamite exploded on a sunken ship.

Then, in 1906? Cliff House survived the earthquake, which surprisingly cost him minimal losses. Probably only because a year later, fate prepared him a powerful blow: the building of amazing beauty burned to the ground in a fire. The pictures in our material today were taken at the dawn of the 1900s. They show what the last incarnation of the cult building was before it was destroyed by fire.