On April 18, 1906, San Franciscans watched as one building after another crumbled in the earthquake, or became ravaged by the ensuing fire. After the smoke cleared, an estimated 28,000 buildings were destroyed, virtually flattening the city. But a few notable structures survived.

“You can see in some photos that certain areas were completely wiped out – there was nothing left,” says Christopher VerPlanck, senior architectural historian at Page and Turnbull, a San Francisco architecture firm that specializes in historic preservations. “The thing that’s striking, though, is that the buildings that were built with steel frames and with other fairly sophisticated technology of that time, are standing basically intact. It’s pretty illuminating to see just how far things had come along up to the mid 1900s.”

The (Westin) St. Francis Hotel on Powell Street is one such shining example. Built in 1904, the famous structure remained standing amidst the rubble that surrounded it following the earthquake. As with most of the surviving buildings, the fire devastated the interior of the St. Francis, but the edifice stayed intact. In fact, the wine steward’s fox terrier, trapped in the hotel basement, emerged alive and was christened “Francis.” A year and a half later, the St. Francis reopened its doors.

Nob Hill’s crowning jewel, The Fairmont Hotel, was nearly finished being constructed when the temblor hit. The six-story Italian Renaissance-style architecture building stayed sturdy, though the fire badly damaged the interior. Luminary architect Julia Morgan was hired to oversee the restoration, and a year later, the Fairmont welcomed its first guest.

Known as the “Granite Lady,” the U.S. Mint also miraculously survived the earthquake and fire. Designed by A.B. Mullet, the oldest stone structure in San Francisco was built to float on its foundation, the key to its survival. As the fire approached, employees reportedly fought off the flames for seven hours using one-inch fire hoses, and protected the $200 million in gold sitting in its vaults. Over the subsequent weeks and months, as most of the city’s financial institutions lay in ruins, the Mint served as the repository for relief funds.

Entire neighborhoods in the city also somehow escaped the swath of destruction. The top of Russian Hill remained intact, as the story goes, after firefighters noticed a single flag waving from a home, staked by a man who was ready to abandon his property. The firefighters rallied around the flag and stopped the fire from reaching that part of the neighborhood.

Jackson Square, coincidentally where many of the firefighters’ favorite watering holes were located, was also spared. And in parts of Nob Hill, then a predominantly Italian neighborhood, homes were saved when residents covered their roofs with wine-soaked burlap sacks, which stopped the sparks from igniting.

But the city lost many of its important landmarks. “Just about everything downtown was destroyed,” says Adam Light, a historic planner with the City of San Francisco. “The few buildings that didn’t totally collapse were mostly burned-out shells.”

The old City Hall fell to ruin. The Palace Hotel, which was designed to withstand earthquakes with its “incredibly beefy structural frame” and sophisticated firefighting equipment, perished in the fire, according to VerPlanck. The building’s own water reservoir was used to fight fires in neighboring structures, and when a boiler exploded in the building, none was left to save it from destruction. The famous “ham and egg fire” destroyed the St. Ignatius Church and College.

San Francisco architecture changed after the earthquake. The telltale ornate Victorian style, which distinguished the city’s look from others, became simplified. In neighborhoods like North Beach, the fastest to rebuild after the quake, the standard rowhouses and residential flat buildings are markedly unadorned compared to the Painted Ladies. “In the hurry to rebuild San Francisco, people didn’t want to get caught up in expensive and time-consuming details,” VerPlanck says. “The style is very simple, not a lot of millwork that early Victorians had.”

By 1910, most of North Beach was largely reconstructed, and the remainder of the city slowly but surely followed suit.