Perched dramatically above the crashing Pacific surf, the ornate Second Cliff House — a turreted Victorian château bristling with spires and gabled dormers — dominates this hand-coloured bird's-eye view of San Francisco's most famous seaside landmark, a steam vessel cutting the horizon behind Seal Rocks while a cannon stands sentinel in the foreground garden. The caption reads "Cliff House Destroyed by Fire Sept. 7, 1907," making this a genuine disaster-commemorative card published in the immediate aftermath of the blaze that consumed Adolph Sutro's extraordinary 1896 structure; someone named Ann (and a companion whose initial appears as "J") inscribed the back with the date Jan 19, 1918 — Saturday — keeping it as a personal memento more than a decade after the fire. Publisher Edward H. Mitchell of San Francisco was the premier West Coast postcard publisher of the Golden Age, and his hand-coloured cards of the 1907 Cliff House disaster are among the most sought-after Bay Area disaster ephemera.