James Flood Mansion
Introduction
Text-to-speech Audio
Images
"James Flood Mansion (San Francisco) 4" by Sanfranman59 - Own work. Licensed under GFDL via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:James_Flood_Mansion_(San_Francisco)_4.JPG#/media/File:James_Flood_Mansion_(San_Francisco)_4.JPG
Backstory and Context
Text-to-speech Audio
In the aftermath of the Great Quake of 1906, Maud Flood’s home on Nob Hill was destroyed by fire. She left San Francisco with her two children and told her husband, James, that she was too fearful of living in a city where such devastation could strike so suddenly. James Leary Flood reassured his wife, saying, “I will build you a house of marble on a hill of granite.”
He found the ideal location, hired renowned architects Bliss & Faville and began construction in 1912. Three years later he and his family moved in, just in time to enjoy the panoramic view overlooking the 1915 Panama-Pacific World Exposition which filled the land below stretching to the Bay.
Flood’s fortune was inherited from his father, James Clair Flood, who purchased a supposedly worthless Nevada mine in the 1870’s. The mine contained veins of gold and silver worth over 300 million dollars. After her husband’s death, Maud Flood gave her home to the Religious of the Sacred Heart, a Catholic order dedicated to education and service to the community. The Flood Mansion is now part of the Broadway campus of Schools of the Sacred Heart. It remains one of the most beautiful examples of domestic architecture in the United States.