Best Place to Shadow Sam Spade

This dazzling Prohibition-era office building, with its gorgeously ceilinged lobby, green marble pillars, and Mayan élan, was built in 1926, two years before the detective-hero of Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon set up shop several floors upstairs. After admiring the interior, cover the 10 blocks southwest to Spade's considerably less glamorous Tenderloin studio at 891 Post near Hyde (Spade commuted via the 38 Geary, a streetcar line in his day). En route you'll come within a block or two of Burritt Street, the alleyway above the Stockton Tunnel where Spade's mendacious partner Miles Archer said his long goodbye (oops, wrong shamus), and John's Grill (63 Ellis), where Spade was known to chow down on lamb chops and baked potatoes. Both locales are thoroughly gumshoe-worthy, particularly on a cool night echoing with foghorns.