BEHAVIOR OF INDIVIDUAL STRUCTURES. 97 
history of the fire in this building I am indebted to S. A. Reed, con- 
sulting engineer for the committee of twenty of the National Hoard 
of Fire Underwriters. Mr. Reed states, however, that the history of 
the fire here must be largely surmise, because reliable evidence was 
not obtainable. 
This company had also a building with reenforced-concrete floor 
construction and wire-glass protection for its windows for one of its 
branch exchanges. The exposure of this building was probably not 
very severe. It was three stories high and the fire got into the upper 
story and cleaned it out ; but the floor construction prevented the fire 
from extending into the stories below, which suffered practically no 
damage to structure or contents. A part of the third-story wall 
was thrown down either by the earthquake or by some other means, 
and this damage may have opened a way for the entrance of the fire. 
PALACE HOTEL. 
All of the interior and the exterior walls of the Palace Hotel, on the 
south side of Market street, were built of brickwork. It is reported 
that the brickwork was reenforced with embedded iron bars. The 
structure stood remarkably well, and there is little indication of 
earthquake damage. The building was nonfireproof, and was, of 
course, completely burned out, but the walls still stand almost as good 
as ever. (See PL XXX, B.) 
POST-OFFICE BUILDING. 
The steel-frame and granite j^ost-ofnce building (Pis. XLII, B ; 
XLIII; XLIV) was carried on isolated grillage foundations, each 
column having its own footing. The diagonals of the building ran 
nearly north and south and east and west, the south corner being at 
Seventh and Mission streets. To the south and west of Mission 
street was an elongated, narrow, curved area in which the earth- 
quake damage was very severe. It was commonly reported that this 
area, which was not far from the south corner of the post-office build- 
ing, was a stream bed or ravine that had been filled within the 
recollection of the older inhabitants of San Francisco. Through the 
courtesy of J. W. Roberts, the local representative of the Supervising 
Architect's Office of the Treasury Department, I was enabled to make 
a detailed inspection of the building, and he also gave me very com- 
plete information as to the history of the building and the causes 
of the various items of damage which were in evidence at the time 
of my inspection. Mr. Roberts, who is evidently a cool and accu- 
rate observer, seemed of the opinion that the material under the 
building was a natural deposit, and not an artificial fill. But toward 
