Few hotels can lay claim to having played a role in the development of an international body. Yet that’s exactly what the Fairmont in San Francisco did. In 1945, 50 of the 51 original member delegates met during what was called the International Conference to draft the United Nations Charter. Today a plaque outside the Garden Room commemorates the event whilst over the hotel’s porte cochere, the flags of the original signatories flutter in the bay winds. In the decades that followed, the hotel hosted every U.S. president, starting with Harry Truman. It also played a crucial role in the life of Tony Bennett: It was in the hotel’s ornate Venetian Room, where he first crooned what would later became his signature tune, "I Left My Heart in San Francisco."