San Francisco’s Oldest Monument Turns 150

Lotta’s Fountain and the Palace Hotel on San Francisco’s Market Street in 1904. (Sepia Times/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

San Francisco is such a relatively new city — especially given how much was destroyed and rebuilt after the 1906 earthquake and fire — that it rarely gets to celebrate actually old things (except for Methuselah, its always-celebrated 100-year-old lungfish ).

Come Tuesday, Sept. 9, we will have arrived at the 150th anniversary of Lotta’s Fountain, the city’s oldest monument, at the intersection of Kearny, Geary and Market Streets. The 18-foot-tall cast-iron fountain was an 1875 gift to the city from the performer Lotta Crabtree , a homegrown talent and once one of the most famous actresses in the United States.

These days, the fountain doesn’t funct