The Fairmont Hotel rose from the ashes of the 1906 earthquake and fire, thanks to Julia Morgan, has played host to U.S. presidents and gave Tony Bennett the venue to debut what would become his signature love song about leaving his heart in San Francisco.
It’s long been known as one of the most storied and glamorous places for famous people to stay in San Francisco — and for everyone else to at least stop in and get a drink. But now it is associated with a celebrity tragedy — the New Year’s Day death of Victoria Jones, the 34-year-old daughter of Academy Award-winning actor Tommy Lee Jones.
According to multiple reports, Victoria Jones was found collapsed and unresponsive in a 14th floor hallway shortly before 3 a.m. Thursday. It’s not known if she was staying in the hotel or visiting someone. A guest alerted hotel staff, who in turn called 911. According to TMZ, San Francisco Fire Department paramedics responded to a report of a medical emergency at the hotel at 2:52 a.m. The emergency was said to be a possible drug overdose, according to audio of the 911 call.
San Francisco police also responded and learned that Jones had been pronounced dead at the scene. No foul play is suspected, while the Medical Examiner is investigating to determine a cause of death.
As a child and teenager, Victoria Jones showed some interest in following in the footsteps of her 79-year-old father, who is best known for films such as “The Fugitive,” “JFK” and “No Country for Old Men.” Victoria Jones appeared in several films in which he starred and directed, including “Men in Black II” in 2002 and “The Homesman” in 2014. After that, she made some red-carpet appearances with her father but otherwise seems to have retreated from the spotlight.
Online court records show that she spent time in the Bay Area in the past year, because she had several misdemeanor criminal cases pending in Napa County involving 2025 charges of obstructing a peace officer, being under the influence of a controlled substance, possession of a narcotic controlled substance and domestic battery.
Whatever happened to Victoria Jones, her death isn’t something people would usually associate with the Fairmont, a luxury hotel whose lobby was still decorated for Christmas on Thursday, according to the Daily Mail. However, famous deaths are not unheard of at some of San Francisco’s other elite destinations.
One of Hollywood’s first scandals involved the death of a young actress, Virginia Rappe, at the St. Francis Hotel on Union Square in 1921. She had been a guest at a raucous party thrown in hotel rooms booked by silent-film comedy superstar Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle, as KQED reported. For reasons that have long been the subject of debate and investigation, Rappe suffered a ruptured bladder and died several days later. Arbuckle was accused of sexual assault and manslaughter, leading to two trials in San Francisco that ended in hung juries. He was found not guilty after a third trial, but he was effectively canceled by studio executives concerned about Prohibition-era morality and public backlash.
Nearly two years later, another famous person died at the Palace Hotel on Market Street: U.S. President Warren G. Harding. On Aug. 2, 1923, Harding collapsed dead in the bed of the presidential suite, several days after he arrived in San Francisco after first becoming ill in Seattle with what thought to be food poisoning. Harding’s death, “a shock to the nation,” was initially attributed to a cerebral hemorrhage though it mostly like due to a heart attack, according to PBS.
Now, the Fairmont Hotel is having to deal with its own headline-making death. In a statement to People, the hotel’s press director said the hotel is “actively cooperating and supporting police authorities” in their investigation.
“We are deeply saddened by an incident that occurred at the hotel on January 1, 2026. Our heartfelt condolences are with the family and loved ones during this very difficult time,” press director Michelle Heston said.
Of course, the elegant Mason Street hotel has long become accustomed to dealing with high-profile guests, including all U.S. presidents presidents except Donald Trump, leading it to earn the nickname the “White House of the West,” according to the San Francisco Standard. These presidents range from William Howard Taft to Harry S. Truman to Barack Obama. Joe Biden twice stayed at the hotel, most recently during Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in 2023.
A pedestrian stops to take a picture of a Tony Bennett statue at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images/TNS)The hotel’s original nine-story, Beaux-Arts-style structure was finished and scheduled to open the day that the 7.9-magnitude earthquake rocked San Francisco on April 18, 1906. While the building survived the earthquake, its elaborate interior was completely gutted by fire that subsequently consumed much of the rest of the city. Julia Morgan, a young architect from Oakland who became the first woman licensed to practice architecture in California, won the commission to rebuild the hotel. She completed the work in a year, which included replacing the glass dome over the Laurel Court and making the hotel earthquake proof with steel-reinforced concrete, a relatively new construction method at the time. The hotel re-opened with “an over-the-top party that included 13,000 oysters, rivers of Champagne and fireworks,” as the San Francisco Standard also reported.
After World War II, Ben Swig, a member of San Francisco’s prominent Swig family, which owned and managed the hotel for the next 50 years, decided to restore the Fairmont to its former glory after saying it had become a bit run down and neglected, the Nob Hill Gazette reported in 2017. One of his restoration projects was to turn the hotel into a center for jazz, big band and, later soul, with headliner acts that included Bennett, Ella Fitzgerald, Tommy Dorsey, Marlene Dietrich, Peggy Lee and James Brown. Swig also opened the hotel’s famous Tonga Room.
Bennett enjoyed a long and storied relationship with the Fairmont, largely because of “I Left My Heart in San Francisco,” which he first performed in the Venetian Room in 1961. Debuting the song was a spur-of-the-moment decision; his pianist and music director, Ralph Sharon, had tucked the song away in a drawer and almost forgotten about. But Sharon decided to bring the song along for their performances at the Fairmont since it was an ode to the city by the bay “where little cable cars climb halfway to the stars.”
Bennett initially thought that “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” would be a local hit, according to the Nob Hill Gazette. But after recording it for “the B-side,” Bennett said “Columbia Records called me and said, ‘Turn the record over!’ as ‘San Francisco’ was on the B-side and had taken off.”
Bennett performed at the Fairmont countless times over the decades, while the hotel enjoyed its long association with the singer, who died in 2023 at age 91. The hotel continues to honor the singer’s legacy with a life-sized statute of him that stands outside the hotel and its luxury Tony Bennett suite on the 22nd floor of its Tower Building, with “breathtaking views of the city and the Bay.”
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