Part Three: Uptown Tenderloin

(Work in Progress)

Tenderloin Chronicles

The architectural data in this section was first researched over twenty-five years ago by the late Anne Bloomfield, and more recently—in depth and with meticulous attention to detail—by Michael Corbett, with whom I worked on a survey of the Tenderloin for the National Register of Historic Places in 2007. The district’s history I have gleaned from both my own research and personal experience. My photography spans the years 2003 to 2009, which accounts for the differences in quality. To impart a sense of the neighborhood’s overall layout, I have where possible fashioned this segment as a walking tour of the Tenderloin. Inasmuch as I took this photograph while walking by the Marathon Hotel, with the Marathon I shall begin.

Marathon

Marathon Apartments (1911), Marathon Hotel (1982). 710 Ellis Street. Apartment building with six four- and five-room units on each floor, converted by 1982 to hotel with 44 one- and two-room units and twenty-eight baths. 1907. Architects: Crim and Scott.

During the reconstruction that followed the 1906 earthquake and fire, the most common building materials used for central city housing were brick, reinforced concrete, galvanized iron, terra-cotta and stucco. The real stonework used in the Marathon’s construction places it a cut above the rest. The quoins and the ornate bracketed entablature that frames the entrance are carved from sandstone, as is the belt course that divides the upper-level rooms from the ground-level storefronts. The only metalwork is the cornice, which has unfortunately been allowed to deteriorate past the point of being repairable in many places. The Marathon is an impressive building, but its owners have done little to maintain it. So it rots away, the likelihood of its restoration becoming more remote with each passing day.

The Marathon’s entrance has been terribly abused, yet it is still beautiful to me in a haunting, almost morbid way. The stonework is soft and porous, so the yellow paint is now a permanent part of it. It is hard to imagine why the lamps were removed, although I suspect the process of removal was violent. What grates against my soul is that everything degrading the entry’s former elegance was done out of sheer, crass commercialism.

The back of the Marathon reveals the dilapidated condition of the building.

The Marathon fascinates me for its unique details and as a study in decay, which has compelled me to return to it repeatedly. With each visit, my eye has been attracted to something I hadn’t noticed before. This time it was the pilaster that seems to support the belt course where it ends behind the entablature. The capital is carved to look like a fringed belt with a single tassel that hangs down over the pilaster. At the very top of the tassel is a tiny, delicate flower that in all likelihood has gone completely unnoticed and unappreciated for many years.

Essex

Hotel Essex. 684 Ellis Street. Hotel with 128 rooms and seventy-two baths. 1912. Architects: Righetti and Headman.

Though unique amid the surrounding architecture, the Art Nouveau-inspired facade of the Essex was nevertheless crafted to blend in by its designer, James Francis Dunn. The hotel’s neon blade sign is especially fine. Now owned by the Community Housing Partnership, the Essex began undergoing renovation late in 2006.

By the end of April 2008, its renovation was complete. The paint job is unfortunately garish and unbecoming, but the new marquee and restored blade sign are spectacular, although it seems the latter may still have some electrical problems. Even so, the corner of Ellis and Larkin is utterly transformed after dark by the torrid glow of neon.

Ellis below Larkin

2007 Survey

David Apartments (formerly Chevy Chase Apartments). 360 Hyde Street. Forty-six one- and two-room units. 1925. Owner and Engineer: William Helbing Company.

Crescent Apartments. 359 Hyde Sreet. Forty-eight two- and three-room units. 1916. Architect: Louis H. Gardner.

Apartment building with eight six-room units. 615–629 Ellis Street.  1909. Architects: Crim and Scott.

Agate Apartments (formerly Dorothy Apartments). 635 Ellis Street. Eighteen two- and three-room units. 1914. Architect: J.G. Kincanon.

Hyde and Ellis

2007 Survey

Pearsonia Apartments. 401 Hyde Street. Thirty-eight two-room units. 1924. Architects: Bauman and Jose.

Apartment building with eight one- and two-room units. 419 Hyde Street. 1922. Contractor: O.E. Carlson.

Eros Apartments. 425 Hyde Street. Twenty-five two- and three-room units. 1923. Contractor: The Helbing Company.

Clarke Apartments (formerly Myrtle Apartments). 437 Hyde Street. Twelve two-room units. 1922. Owner and builder: E.V. Lacey.

Killilea Apartments. 451 Hyde Street. Seven three-room units. 1909. Owners: M.E. and Matthew J. Killilea. Builder: Matthew J. Killilea.

Apartment building with forty-four two-room units. 455 Hyde Street. 1926. Owners: Jacob Steur and Edward V. Lacey. Contractor: Jacob Steur.

Yale

Erleen Hotel, Yale Hotel (1982). 633 Larkin Street. Store and rooming house with twenty-one rooms and five baths. 1911. Architect: G. Albert Lansburgh.

Along with many more famous structures such as the San Francisco Opera House, the Golden Gate Theatre, and the Warfield Building, the Yale was designed by native son G. Albert Lansburgh.

The Deco motif that distinguishes the hotel’s sign is a defining characteristic of numerous old blade signs scattered throughout the central city.

Detective Story

Crawford Apartments. 620 Eddy Street. Thirty-four two-room units. 1910. Contractor: Mess-Nicholson Company.

In 1923, the pioneering crime fiction magazine Black Mask published Dashiell Hammett’s story “Arson Plus,” which introduced the character known as the Continental Op, an otherwise nameless San Francisco detective agency operative. Hammett was at the beginning of his writing career, eking out a living with income from his pulp fiction and from book reviews published by Forum, a literary journal. During that time, before he became famous, he resided at the Crawford Apartments.

Winter Morning – Hyde Street

2007 Survey

Princess Apartments. 155 Hyde Street. Forty-nine mostly two-room units. 1926. Architect: H.C. Baumann.

Cosmopolitan Apartments . 225 Hyde Street.

Hyde Street Studios (behind trees) (formerly Fox Film Corporation, later Wally Heider Studios). 235 Hyde Street. 1931. Probable architects: O’Brien Brothers.

Fox Film Corporation and RKO (1932), Gaumont British Picture Corporation of America and Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation (1937) film exchange; La Voz Latina (2005). 251 Hyde Street. 1931. Architects: O’Brien Brothers and W.D. Peugh.

Twentieth Century Fox, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Distributing Corporation, Loews, and United Artists (1937) film exchange; Central City SRO Collaborative (2005). 255 Hyde Street. 1930. Architects: O’Brien Brothers and W.D. Peugh.

Until the end of the 1980s, businesses along this stretch of Hyde Street and around the corner on Golden Gate Avenue included Wally Heider Studios (now Hyde Street Studios), Monaco Labs and Leo Diner Films—a recording studio and motion picture labs/post-production facilities that in the ’40s and ’50s had taken over film exchange buildings. Among the notables who recorded albums at Wally Heider’s were the Jefferson Airplane, Grateful Dead, Creedence Clearwater Revival, and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. As one who was involved in San Francisco’s “underground” filmmaking scene in the ’70s and ’80s, these buildings played a part in my own history. Wally Heider Studios was where I recorded the score to Thundercrack! in 1974, and Leo Diner Films was where that film and many others on which I worked were processed and printed. In ‘78 and ‘79, I was the sound engineer for Diner Films.

Adrian and Lafayette

Adrian Hotel. 493 Eddy Street. Stores and rooming house with sixty rooms and twenty-four baths. 1907. Owner: George Schaefer, owner of National Brewery. Architects: Salfield and Kohlberg.

Lafayette Coffee Shop. 250 Hyde Street.

On the other side of Hyde Street are the Adrian Hotel and the locally renowned Lafayette Coffee Shop. I like this image because it shows nothing more recent than the Coca-Cola sign, making it a real window to the past.

The Lafayette Coffee Shop is the diner of choice for many people living in Tenderloin residential hotels. What makes this diner so attractive to me are both the original yellow tiling along its base and its many signs, which have remained largely unchanged for well over half a century. At night, in its blaze of neon lights, the Lafayette looks very much like a carnival midway attraction. Shortly before I took this photograph, the Lafayette’s blade sign was repaired. At the same time, the original hand-lettered signs at the bottom of the windows were painted over with stenciled lettering. Alas, sic transit gloria mundi!

Brown Jug

Brown Jug Saloon. 496 Eddy Street. Corner storefront of the Carmel Apartments (300 Hyde Street). 1917. Architect unknown.

Formerly an Owl (later known as Rexall) drugstore, the Brown Jug has been in continuous operation since 1941. Owned by Max McIntyre and affably managed by bartenders Charles, Vince, Sarah, and Jo, it is one of the neighborhood’s “old school” survivors and a favorite of many long-time Tenderloin residents.

Yosemite

Yosemite Apartments (formerly Bonita Apartments). 480 Eddy Street. Thirty-five two-room units. 1924. Architect: Edward E. Young.

Machine shop converted to garage by 1929. 466 Eddy Street. 1920. Owner and builder: Louis D. Stoff.

Klinge

Elite Garage. 460 Eddy Street. 1927. Architect: Norman W. Mohr.

Klinge Apartments. 450 Eddy Street. 1924. Sixteen two- and three-room units. Owner and builder: Francis O’Reilly.

Early Morning – Eddy Street

2007 Survey

Hotel Jefferson. 440 Eddy Street.

Hotel Fairfax. Rooming house with fifty-six rooms and fourteen baths. 420 Eddy Street. 1907. Architects: Stone and Smith.

Hotel Kinney. 410 Eddy Street.

Hotel Verona. 317 Leavenworth Street.

Cadillac Hotel. 380 Eddy Street.

Except for the cars parked in front of the hotels, this photograph of Eddy Street is another window to the past.

Jefferson

Hotel Ormond (1909), Hotel Jefferson (1982). 440 Eddy Street. 1906. Architects: Harry J. and William L. Oser.

The Jefferson was the first SRO to be taken over through the master lease program managed by the Tenderloin Housing Clinic. Especially at night, the hotel looks like the setting for an old Alfred Hitchcock film.

Down Eddy Street

These next two shots are among my earliest photos. Even though the marquee and nearly all of the blade signs have had their neon fixtures removed, what you see here is pretty much the way most sidewalks in the lower Tenderloin appeared thirty or forty years ago.

I love the patchwork quilt of overlapping signs and fire escapes that recede into the distance.

Two Hotels

Hotel Leo (1911), Hotel Kinney (1982). 410 Eddy Street. Rooming house with fifty-seven rooms and thirteen baths. 1907. Architect: Emil John.

Rosslyn Hotel (1911), Burbank Hotel (1929–1933). Hotel Verona (1982). 317 Leavenworth Street. 1910. Architects: Julius Krafft and Son.

Between 1988 and 2002, the year the San Francisco Sprinkler Ordinance was passed, hotel fires had claimed over 1,700 SRO units and several lives. Thousands of tenants lost their property to fire and were displaced for months and even years afterward. When a fire burned out several rooms at the Kinney in 1999, the hotel was shut down and boarded up for seven years, removing fifty-seven units from the housing market. The hotel was finally reopened in midsummer 2006.

Born in Germany and educated at Stuttgart, Julius E. Krafft emigrated to America in 1872, spent a couple of years in Chicago, and moved to San Francisco in 1874. For twelve years he ran the drafting department for T.J. Welsh (Welsh and Carey), after which he opened his own business. Among the buildings designed by Krafft are the Hotel Verona, Allen Hotel, and St. George Apartments in the Tenderloin, St. Paulus Lutheran Church at 999 Eddy, a Lutheran church in Alameda, and numerous private residences. G. Albert Lansburgh, who later designed the Golden Gate Theatre and many other famous structures, worked for Krafft while studying at UC Berkeley.

Source: San Francisco History Center, S.F. Public Library
Eddy Street near Leavenworth, 1947. In the mid-40s, the Tenderloin’s biggest problem was double-parked cars. The tracks are for the 31 streetcar line, which was discontinued two years after this photo was taken and is now the 31 Balboa trolley line.

A New Day

2007 Survey

Hotel Hamlin (Victory Hotel for a short time, then renamed Hamlin Hotel). 387 Eddy Street. Hotel with eighty-six rooms and fifty-two baths. 1909. Architect unknown.

K and H Hotel. 395 Eddy Street.

Allen Hotel. 411 Eddy Street.

The intersection of Eddy and Leavenworth is to me one of the most photogenic locales in the Tenderloin. The brickwork of the K and H (St. George) Hotel is exceptionally beautiful with its suggestion of a columned arcade. I am especially fond of the way that alternate brackets along the bottom of the building’s cornice become keystones for the arches.

Allen

Blade signs were once a dominant feature of central city streetscapes. Some of those that remain still have  neon fixtures and most of these in recent years have been restored.

Allen Hotel (formerly Holckele Hotel). 411 Eddy Street. Stores and rooming house with twenty-nine rooms and eight baths. 1907. Architect: Julius E. Krafft.

Note how the pediment above the entrance to the Allan Hotel is reflected in the shape of its blade sign.

Lower Leavenworth

2007 Survey

(left) K and H Hotel. 395 Eddy Street.

McAllister Tower. 100 McAllister Street.

YMCA. 220 Golden Gate Avenue.

Page Hotel. 161 Leavenworth Street.

Hotel Hurley. 201 Leavenworth Street.

Ivanhoe Apartments. 223–229 Leavenworth Street. Stores and apartment building with eight two-room units. 1915. Architects: Rousseau and Rousseau.

Carlton Apartments (1924), Lan Court Apartments (1933). 237 Leavenworth Street. Twenty-three two-room units. 1922. Architect: E. H. Denke.

Morning Side Apartments (formerly Grand Rapids Apartments, Chester Apartments, Lady Florence Apartments). 245 Leavenworth Street. Forty-eight two- and three-room units. 1910. Architect: H. Geilfuss.

Allen Hotel. 411 Eddy Street.

Early Sunday Morning

K and H Hotel (formerly Lando Hotel, Troy Hotel, Hotel LeBurt, Lester Hotel, Hotel St. George). 395 Eddy Street. 1906. Architects: Rousseau and Sons.

Originally owned by Morris and Meyer Lando, this splendid structure began life as an office building and by 1914 was converted to a rooming house. After several name changes over the years, in 1982 it was rechristened as the Hotel St. George, a name befitting the building’s dignity and grace. Twenty years later, under new ownership, it was renamed the K and H Hotel, a truly awful name for this little architectural gem. Happily, the old St. George sign is still there, as it serves to keep alive a bit of history worth remembering.

View from the Empire Market

2007 Survey

Cadillac Hotel. 380 Eddy Street.

Hotel Elm. 364 Eddy Street.

Lenice Lee Apartments (formerly Eddystone Apartments). 340 Eddy Street. Eighty-nine two- and three-room units. 1911. Owner: Indochinese Housing Development Corporation (2007). Architect: Lewis M. Gardner.

Penwell Apartments. 326 Eddy Street. Twenty-four two-room units. 1923. Architect: Andrew H. Knoll.

Hotel Herald. 308 Eddy Street.

Cadillac

Cadillac Hotel. 380 Eddy Street. Hotel with 170 rooms and ninety-one baths in two-, three-, and four-room suites; dining room converted to boxing ring 1924. 1907. Owner: Andrew A. Louderback, poultry, game, and distilling (1907), Reality House West (1977). Architects: Meyer and O’Brien. A. A. Louderback lived in a house on this site until 1906.

Owned and operated by Leroy and Kathy Looper’s Reality House West since 1977, the Cadillac was the first nonprofit-owned SRO in California and was the model for supportive housing as a means to reduce homelessness in the United States. Leroy and Kathy’s numerous contributions to the community have had a deep and lasting impact and have assured them of an honored place in the City’s history. Leroy’s title of Father of the Tenderloin is well deserved.

Jerry Garcia lived at the Cadillac in 1961. His appointment with destiny came several years later, when a newly-formed band named the Warlocks (Garcia, Ron “Pigpen” McKernan, Bob Weir, Bill Kreutzmann, and Phil Lesh) dropped acid with Ken Kesey and changed their name to the Grateful Dead.

Source: San Francisco History Center, S.F. Public Library
Cadillac Hotel, 1907. Judging by its unoccupied storefronts, the Cadillac was brand-spanking-new when this photo was taken. It’s also the only building on the block! Note the cobblestone paving and the streetcar tracks on Eddy Street.

Postcard, circa 1908.

Elm

Hotel Eaton (1911), Hotel Rand (1929), Hotel Elm (1982). 364 Eddy Street. Rooming house with eighty-seven rooms and forty-eight baths. 1911. Architect: L. M. Gardener.

The Elm is a wonderful example of how the restoration of an old neon blade sign can uplift and brighten the urban environment.

The Elm’s sign had been reinstalled just days before I took this photograph, so it was absolutely pristine. The bluish tint of the tubes spelling out “hotel” indicates that the tubes are brand-new. As white tubes age they become yellowed, so that blue tells a little story of its own.

Battambang

Manila Townhouse Apartments (formerly Estelle Apartments). 335 Eddy Street. Eight apartments over store. 1916. Owner and architect unknown.

Besides the apartment windows, the most compelling features of this building are its signs, both new and old. The Khmer script of the Battambang Market marquee and the antique, shield-shaped metal armature are an interesting juxtaposition of cultures and times. One of the earliest writing systems used in Southeast Asia, Khmer script has evolved over a thousand years and is descended from the ancient Brahmi script of India.

Herald

Herald Hotel. 308 Eddy Street. Hotel with 159 rooms and 106 baths. 1910. Owner: Citizens Housing Corporation and RHC Communities (2004). Architects: Alfred Henry Jacobs (1910), Schwartz and Rothschild (2004).

Now that it has been restored, the Herald is one of the most glamorous buildings in the Tenderloin, looking much as it did almost a century ago.

Brochure, Hotel Herald, circa 1915.

Postcard, circa 1915.

Postcard, circa 1937.

Clock – Boeddeker Park

Eddy and Jones Streets

Boeddeker Park is a tiny, inner city park in the middle of the Tenderloin. Since its opening and dedication over twenty years ago to the late Father Boeddeker, the Franciscan who established the St. Anthony Foundation, the park has been plagued with crime. The City’s shortsighted, heavy-handed, entirely ineffective solution was to erect a tall, stout fence of steel around the perimeter of the park and down the length of the brick-paved footpath that bisects it, afterward removing all the lovely cast-iron park benches along the footpath, resulting in a landscape that is uninviting and devoid of comfort, more like a prison exercise yard than a park. One of the nicest remaining fixtures is the clock that stands at the park’s entrance, thankfully outside the fence.

During the summer and early autumn of 2005, St. Anthony Foundation community liaison Daniel O’Connor,  Tenderloin resident and retired businessman Daniel Stein, the Hotel Project (me), and Presentation Community operations manager Jose Vega organized the first Boeddeker Park Arts Festival, which celebrated the work of many otherwise unacknowledged central city artists. I am very proud of this little event that brought together for the first time so much of the community’s creative talent, and which proved once again that when people work together toward a common goal, nearly anything is possible. While at the festival, I met author and photographer Virgina Allyn, who later created the splendid little biographical sketch, A Day in the Life of a Photographer. Unfortunately, the festival was a one-time-only event, as we couldn’t find anyone willing to take over the production for succedent years. In retrospect, I think it may have been a bit ahead of its time. I hope that someday soon a similar event will become a permanent part of Tenderloin culture and tradition.

View from the Park

Hotel Drake (formerly Eddy Hotel, 1911–1923; Hotel Glynn). 235 Eddy Street. Rooming house with sixty rooms and twenty-six baths. 1906. Architect: Arthur H. Lamb.

Harriman Apartments (formerly Standard Apartments). 245 Eddy Street. Fifty-four two-room units. 1924. Architects: William Helbing Company (1924), George Miers (1983).

Roosevelt Garage (formerly Metropolitan Garage). 265 Eddy Street. Four-hundred-car parking garage. 1924. Architect: Henry Clay Smith.

Frank Capra, the great American director of populist movies such as Meet John Doe (1941), lived at the Hotel Drake (then named the Eddy Hotel) in 1921, the year he directed his first film, Fultah Fisher’s Boarding House.

Henry Clay Smith, known as “The Hillside Architect” for his signature talent in siting buildings in San Francisco’s hilly terrain, designed two buildings in the Tenderloin: the Metropolitan Garage on Eddy Street and the Bernard Apartments at 222 Leavenworth.

Source: San Francisco History Center, S.F. Public Library
Eddy Street, west of Taylor, 1944. The three-story building at the center left is the former Eddy Hotel, then named the Hotel Glynn; nearest on the right are the Windsor, Olympic, and Ritz hotels. Adjacent to the Windsor is the Downtown Bowling Alley that was demolished in the mid-80s and supplanted by Boeddeker Park.

Taylor and Eddy

Hotel Windsor. 238 Eddy Street. Rooming house with 112 rooms and sixty-two baths. 1909. Architect: Charles R. Wilson.

Alexander Residence (formerly Olympic Hotel). 230 Eddy Street. Hotel with 225 rooms and 179 baths, dining room, lounges, and parking garage; water originally from basement well. 1928. Architects: Clausen and Amandes (1928), Asian Neighborhood Design (2004).

Hotel Ritz. 216 Eddy Street. Rooming house with 111 rooms and forty baths. 1910. Owner: City of San Francisco (1983). Architect: Ralph Warner Hart.

All three of these hotels have been rehabilitated and converted to supportive housing. Most recent was the Alexander Residence, by the Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corporation, which has its offices across the street in the Franciscan Towers.

Below are some postcards of the Alexander in its glory days, when it was the Olympic Hotel.

Alcatraz Island is strangely missing and the Oakland side of the Bay Bridge ends before landfall in this heavily retouched picture of San Francisco Bay, circa 1937.

Franciscan Towers

Franciscan Towers (formerly Hotel Clark). 201–229 Eddy Street. 1914. Architect: Henry H. Meyers. Rooming house with 153 rooms and 127 baths, rehabilitated with 105 units by the Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corporation. Exterior completely remodeled in Moderne style, circa 1950.

Postcard, circa 1930.

Source: San Francisco History Center, S.F. Public Library
Connie’s Restaurant, 1941. Newscopy: “Two doors at Connie’s bid you welcome. One leads to the waffle shop . . . the other to the cocktail buffet. Jim Weir manages both institutions, which really are one. Connie’s is a favorite dining and drinking rendezvous . . . the address, 225 Eddy Street.”

Lower Taylor

2007 Survey

Warfield Hotel. 118 Taylor Street.

Warfield Theater. Unit block Taylor Street.

(right) Golden Gate Theatre. 1 Taylor Street.

Grand Hotel. 57 Taylor Street. Stores and hotel with 156 rooms and 123 baths. 1906. Architect: C. A. Meussdorffer.

Taylor Street Center (formerly St. Ann Hotel, Hotel Lennox, Bard Hotel, Hotel Winfield). 111 Taylor Street. 1907. Architect: A.M. Edelman.

Curran House. 145 Taylor Street.

Franciscan Towers. 201 Eddy Street.

The ground floor of 111 Taylor Street was at one time Compton’s Cafeteria, site of the 1966 Compton’s Riot, the first documented gay and transgender uprising against the police.

Rooms

Another piece of vanished urban landscape is this century-old sign advertising rooms at the Hotel Portola, which could be seen across a parking lot on Taylor Street between the Taylor Street Center and the Franciscan Towers. Two years after I took this picture, TNDC built the eight-story Curran House on the site of the parking lot. Though no longer visible from the street, the rear wall of the Camelot and the side of the Drake Hotel now form the back of a courtyard for the Curran.

Source: San Francisco History Center, S.F. Public Library
Taylor Street, 1926. In order to shoot this dramatic perspective looking north on Taylor from near Market Street, the photographer must have climbed a lamp post. On the left is the Grand Hotel; nearest on the right are the Warfield Theater and the Warfield Hotel. Most remarkable is that virtually all of the structures seen here are still intact.

Postcard, Grand Hotel, circa 1907.

Warfield

Hotel Hyland (1907), Hotel Young (1908), Hotel Empire (1911), Chapin Hotel (1920), Hotel Raford (1923), Tyland Hotel, Hotel Warfield (1982). 118 Taylor Street. Stores and rooming house with seventy-three rooms and thirty-seven baths. 1907. Architects: Ross and Burgren.

Old signs and painted advertisements had a simple and engaging way of communicating. The parking sign invites one in, its lovely curved arrow pointing the way, and the Par-T-Pak ad for mixers is direct and to the point. Regrettably, the parking sign no longer exists.

Dawn over Taylor Street

P. Dunphy Building. 142 Taylor Street. Stores and offices. 1908. Architect: E. A. Bozio.

This lovely creation is one of my favorite buildings and I had photographed it numerous times, but was never satisfied with the results. One morning, on my way home from a pre-dawn shoot, there was a light, drizzling rainfall. I was getting chilled, so I was more focused on getting home and getting warm than on my surroundings. I had walked a good hundred feet or more past this building when it finally hit me that the time to get the photograph I wanted was that very moment. I turned and walked back to find the right vantage point, took several shots and continued home wetter, but happier.

Original Joe’s

Original Joe’s Italian Restaurant. 144 Taylor Street.

On 12 October 2007, a $2 million fire burned out this 70 year-old Tenderloin landmark. Although a sign on the front door says, “Closed due to fire, opening soon”, rumor has it that the owner, Marie Duggan, daughter of the original Joe, has been having problems with the insurance company. The restaurant is missed by all in the neighborhood and by many people around the world.

Source: San Francisco History Center, S.F. Public Library
Lower Eddy Street, 1942. This photo was apparently taken from the second floor of the Rosenbaum Building (better known in recent years as Club 181), across Eddy Street from the Hotel Kern (now the William Penn). The nearest buildings on the left are the Empress, Crystal, and Wade (now the Bijou) hotels. Before Hallidie Plaza was constructed in the 1970s, Eddy Street actually began at Market and Powell. The building in the upper right corner is the old Emporium on Market Street.

Source: San Francisco History Center, S.F. Public Library (Photo: Mary Anne Kramer)
Golden Peacock Restaurant, 1974. The venerable and renowned Greek taverna was located at 173 Eddy, in a storefront of the Rosenbaum Building.

William Penn

2007 Survey

Hotel Cecil (1907), Hotel Russell (1911), Hotel Kern (1923), William Penn Hotel (1984). 160 Eddy Street. Rooming house with 109 rooms and fifty-four baths. 160 Eddy Street. 1906. Owner: City of San Francisco (2007). Architect: Albert Pissis. Former tenant: Albatross Bookstore.

Designed by the architect of the Hibernia Bank Building at 1 Jones Street, the William Penn was constructed soon after the earthquake and fire of 1906. Next to it, looking eastward, are the Empress, Crystal and Bijou hotels, with the Parc Renaissance Hotel looming in the background.

Source: San Francisco History Center, S.F. Public Library
Hotel Cecil, undated. “Reception room of a suite deluxe, bedroom and sun parlor connecting.”

Source: San Francisco History Center, S.F. Public Library
Hotel Cecil, undated. “Sun parlor, suite deluxe.”

The William Penn’s storefront was the site of the well-known Albatross Bookstore until 1983, when it was replaced by the Exit Theater. Since then, the Exit has become a centerpiece for experimental theater and the producer of the annual San Francisco Fringe Festival.

Source: San Francisco History Center, S.F. Public Library (Photo: Mary Anne Kramer)
Albatross Book Company, 1974.

Empress

Langham Hotel (1911), Empress Hotel (1923). 144 Eddy Street. Rooming house with ninety-two rooms and sixty-two baths. 1907. Architect: Charles R. Wilson.

The beautiful facade of the restored Empress Hotel epitomizes the value of preserving the architectural integrity of a neighborhood.

Joy of Life

Crystal Hotel (formerly the Gotham Lodgings, Belva Hotel). 130 Eddy Street. Rooming house with forty-seven rooms and twenty-eight baths (more than one bath for every two rooms). 1908. Architect: Charles R. Wilson.

This is the rear of the Crystal Hotel as seen from Mason Street, one of my earliest photographs, and one of my favorites because it captures the essence of what makes the Tenderloin for me such an endless source of fascination. From 1912 until her retirement in 1917, this was “Diamond Jessie” Hayman’s brothel. The first floor was leased out as a saloon, the parlors and madam’s suite were on the second floor, and the girls’ suites, dining room and kitchen were on the third. It was lavishly decorated and had a champagne cellar stocked with wines from all over the world. According to one of Jessie’s girls, Beverly Davis, her prices were staggering. When she died in 1923, Jessie’s net worth in diamonds and Tenderloin real estate was $100,000, equivalent in 2009 to well over $1.2 million.

I was captivated by these walls long before I knew their history or had a camera to photograph them. The two archaic painted advertisements are wonderful enough, but the peculiar tin-covered room that hangs on the back of the hotel is a real enigma. I often wondered why it was built and if it was still used. Then I met someone who knew a person who once lived in the room to which it’s attached. Of all things, they had used the annex as an extra bedroom, which was barely large enough to contain a folding cot.

The question of why this curious extension was originally built not only remains unanswered, but is now also moot. The eight story Mason Street Housing at 149 Mason Street has made these walls just another page in history.

Source: San Francisco History Center, S.F. Public Library
Crystal Sandwich Shop, 110 Eddy Street, 1931.

West

Hotel Dunloe (1923), Hotel Zee (1984), West Hotel (2005). 141 Eddy Street. Rooming house with 129 rooms and thirty-nine baths. 1908. Architects: Cunningham and Politeo.

Located next to the Ambassador and across the street from the Empress, the West Hotel has been rehabilitated, along with its jaunty neon sign, and is now operated as supportive housing by the Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corporation. Owned by Vasilios Glimidakis from 1967 to 1984, the hotel was then the center of the Tenderloin’s Greek sector.

Ambassador

Ferris Harriman Theater and Hotel (1911), Ambassador Hotel (1923). 55 Mason Street. Theater and midpriced hotel; theater converted to garage 1929. 1911, addition 1922. Architects: Earl B. Scott and K. McDonald.

The Ambassador was the home of science fiction and true crime writer Miriam Allen de Ford from 1936 until her death in 1975. She is probably best known for her book The Real Bonnie and Clyde, published in 1968.

The stately Ambassador has been beautifully renovated by the Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corporation. I like to call this my postcard view of the building.

The early morning sunshine accentuates the way in which the keyboard pattern of the Ambasssador’s quoining is reflected in the cornice.

Source: San Francisco History Center, S.F. Public Library (Photo: Mary Anne Kramer)
Mike’s Restaurant, 1974. Mike’s was on the southeast corner of Eddy and Mason, across the street from the Ambassador.

Source: San Francisco History Center, S.F. Public Library
Tivoli Opera House, 1906. Before it was destroyed by the 1906 fire, the Tivoli occupied the southwest corner of Eddy and Mason, where the Ambassador Hotel now stands. Enrico Caruso was in town with the New York Metropolitan Opera company for their third engagement at the Tivoli when the ‘06 earthquake struck. Terrorized, Caruso fled the City, never to return.  The opera house was replaced in 1908 by the Tivoli Theater, a half-block away on Eddy Street.

Source: San Francisco History Center, S.F. Public Library
Tivoli Theater, 1949. Written on back of photo: “End of an era, Eddy Street between Mason and Powell, 1949. ‘31′ street cars replaced by buses July 1949, Tivoli Theater has last performances June 1949.” The popularity of the noted theater faded with the advent of motion pictures and attempts to revive the splendor of the old opera house failed. The theater was replaced by a parking garage.

Mason and Turk

2007 Survey

The sign for the short-lived Crash Club marks the site of Polo’s Restaurant, which was for many years one of the Tenderloin’s most popular nightspots.

Metropolis

Hotel Metropolis (formerly Glenn Hotel, State Hotel, Oxford Hotel). 16 Turk Street. Hotel with 122 rooms and 115 baths (one bath per room or suite). 1911. Architect: William H. Weeks.

Postcard, circa 1945.

Source: San Francisco History Center, S.F. Public Library
Turk Street near Market and Mason, 1941.

Dalt

Hotel Dalt (formerly Hotel Dale). 34 Turk Street. Hotel with 193 rooms and seventy-eight baths. 1910. Architect: Charles W. Dickey.

The Dalt is another acquisition of the Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corporation that has been renovated and now serves as supportive housing. Next to the Dalt is the site of the legendary McDonald’s Bookstore (”A Dirty, Poorly-lit Place for Books”), which for eighty years was known as the place to go for bibliophiles in search of the offbeat and arcane.

Lobby, Hotel Dalt.

Dahlia

Dahlia Hotel (formerly Hotel Taylor, Hotel Thames). 74 Turk Street. Rooming house with seventy rooms and eighteen baths. 1907. Architect: Norman R. Coulter.

A city’s buildings and signs are the loci of its history. Our ability to understand and appreciate the past is diminished when these links to our city’s time line are removed. Think of the importance of your personal keepsakes and mementos. What are they but tangible links to someone, or some place in time that you hold dear and wish to remember? Though time-worn and neglected, the Dahlia’s sign was a piece of Tenderloin history—now gone forever.

Source: San Francisco History Center, S.F. Public Library
Dahlia Hotel, 1937. Newscopy: “When hotel men tried to get the Dahlia Hotel at 74 Turk Street closed, they said it was a vice resort with 10 girls. Mayor Rossi’s secretary said: ‘You run your hotels and we’ll run the rest.’”

Source: San Francisco History Center, S.F. Public Library
Unit block Turk Street, 1944.

Turk and Taylor

2007 Survey

Hotel Warfield. 118 Taylor Street.

Doll House (formerly Gayety Theater, now empty). Stores and loft converted to theater. 76 Turk Street. 1922. Architect: Earl B. Betz.

Dahlia Hotel. 74 Turk Street.

Aranda Hotel (formerly Hotel Schwartz, Hotel Tynan). 64 Turk Street. Rooming house with 123 rooms and thirty-eight baths. 1911. Architects: George Streshly and Company.

Winston Arms Hotel (formerly Hotel Brayton). 50 Turk Street. Hotel with forty-two two-room and bath suites. 1913. Architect: Absalom J. Barnett. Building vacant and boarded up.

Dalt Hotel. 34 Turk Street.

Hotel Metropolis. 16 Turk Street.

On the corner of Taylor and Turk is the 21 Club, a bar of local repute and one of the very few old Tenderloin establishments still in business. The Doll House was formerly the Gayety Theater.

Source: San Francisco History Center, S.F. Public Library
Gayety Theater, 1967.

165 Turk Street Apartments

(Formerly El Crest Apartments). 165 Turk Street. Twenty-one two- and three-room apartments. 1923. Designer: James H. Hjul, engineer.

The former El Crest Apartments are now owned and operated by the Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corporation. The storefront at 161 Turk Street (renumbered as 165) was formerly the Record Exchange, home of Bill Melander’s world-famous record collection.

Source: San Francisco History Center, S.F. Public Library
The Record Exchange, 1947.

Source: San Francisco History Center, S.F. Public Library
William “Pops” Melander, 1947.

Lower Turk Street

2007 Survey

Helen Hotel. 166 Turk Street.

Star Garage. 150 Turk Street. 1921. Architect: Joseph L. Stewart.

Boston Hotel (formerly the Earle Lodgings). 140 Turk Street. Lodging house with forty-one rooms and two baths. 1907. Architect: Charles M. Rousseau. Former tenant: Blue and Gold Bar, now San Francisco Rescue Mission.

Empty building. 132 Turk Street. Store and restaurant, converted to lodging house by 1981 with eighty-two rooms (possibly cribs) and five baths. 1923. Architect unknown. Windows boarded up. Former tenant: Port Hole Lounge (later the Coral Sea).

Camelot Hotel (formerly Hotel Portola, Marathon Hotel, Lowell Hotel, Argue Hotel). 124 Turk Street. Rooming house with fifty-seven rooms and thirty-two baths. 1907. Architect: Albert Farr.

Youth Hostel Centrale (formerly the Elite Lodgings, Hotel Holly, Porter Hotel). 116 Turk Street. Rooming house with twenty-six rooms and six baths. 1910. Architect: E. A. Hermann.

Taylor Street Center. 111 Taylor Street.

Source: San Francisco History Center, S.F. Public Library
The Port Hole,1942. Newscopy: “The Port Hole, 126 Turk Street, provides its patrons with song and rhythm de luxe. Above are (left to right) Bud Seghiari, ‘groan box’ artist extraordinary; Evelyn Thompson, Sadie Shipley and Judy Blair (seated on the piano), mistresses of song; Dave Olson at the piano and Larry Duran with guitar.”

In 1967, the USS Coral Sea was adopted by the City of San Francisco, becoming the first ship to officially represent a city without directly bearing its name, hence its motto “San Francisco’s Own.” The Port Hole, in honor of this, changed its name to the Coral Sea the same year. In the 1970s, the Coral Sea bar was one of my occasional drop-in spots in the Tenderloin. It was a small place, but always lively and very popular, as you might imagine, with sailors and merchant marines.

Under Lowering Skies

Helen Hotel (formerly El Rosa Hotel). 166 Turk Street. Rooming house with thirty rooms and three baths. 1906. Architect: C. A. Meussdorffer.

Old painted advertisements are a part of the central city landscape of which I am especially fond, not just for their visual impact, but also for their historical significance.

Helen Hotel. 166 Turk Street.

In a very real way, they are time portals capable of transporting us to the past, if only in our imaginations.

Antonia Manor

Antonia Manor (formerly Hotel Governor). 180 Turk Street. Hotel with 145 rooms and 134 baths. 1925. Architect: Creston H. Jensen.

Nicely renovated by the Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corporation, the Antonia is home to Mimi’s Manor House restaurant, one of my long-time favorite Tenderloin eateries. The portions are huge and the prices unbelievably low, plus I am completely infatuated with Mimi herself, a real gem in this or any other neighborhood. The entrance to the restaurant is on Jones Street (bottom left in the photo).

Musicians Union

Musicians Union hall. 230 Jones Street. 1924. Architect: Sylvain Schnaittacher.

Designed by the man who was then president of the local American Institute of Architects, the Musicians Union Hall is now occupied by the San Francisco Rescue Mission. In the early 1970s there were various bars and nightclubs in the Tenderloin that featured live music. I was a regular at one of those places, a little hole-in-the-wall at 115 Mason Street that had a gorgeous old hardwood bar and an upright piano. On most nights it featured the jazz improvisations of a wizened and sprightly old pianist who would sometimes sit and talk with me on his breaks. No doubt he enjoyed my praise, but I think he also appreciated my respect, for he was very indulgent of someone as young and full of questions as I was. In the course of our conversations I learned, among other things, that in those days virtually every working musician in San Francisco was a member of the Musicians Union.

When the Musicians Union building was taken over by the San Francisco Rescue Mission, the union’s archives—an entire basement full of original sheet music, wax pressings, 78’s, posters, photographs, musical instruments and musicians’ personal mementos, priceless artifacts of San Francisco’s musical history—were unceremoniously loaded into dumpsters and hauled away. The loss is overwhelming, tragic, and irreversible.

Jones and Turk

2007 Survey

205 Jones Apartments. 205 Jones Street. Stores and apartment building with fifty two-room units. 1924. Architect: Edward E. Young.

Tudor Apartments. 225 Jones Street. Twenty two- and three-room units. 1923. Designer: August G. Headman.

Padre Hotel (formerly Crystal Hotel). 241 Jones Street. Hotel with ninety rooms and baths. 1928. Architect: Herman C. Baumann.

When the Tenderloin was extolled for its jazz clubs and night life, the Musicians Union Hall was its wellspring of entertainers. Located just across Jones Street from the union hall, the Padre Hotel was then known as a musicians’ hotel.

Anamnesis

2007 Survey

Granada Garage. 256–266 Turk Street. 1920. Contractor: Monson Brothers.

Building under construction. 230–250 Turk Street.

Apartment building with eight rooms and four baths. 218 Turk Street. 1921. Contractor: Monson Brothers.

205 Jones Apartments. 205 Jones Street.

Antonia Manor. 180 Turk Street.

Here photographed in mid-construction and completed in early summer 2008, the Salvation Army’s Ray and Joan Kroc Community Center was built with funds that were part of a $1.5 billion bequest made in 2003 by hamburger heiress Joan Kroc. It replaces the Army’s old community center, which many years ago had been the Hotel Von Dorn, one of the earliest buildings to be erected during the Tenderloin’s reconstruction. In its heyday, the Von Dorn was evidently a very charming and cozy hotel.

Tri-fold postcard, circa 1908. Faintly visible behind the Hotel Von Dorn’s steel frame is the Hotel Cadillac on Eddy Street.

Postcard, circa 1915.

Tenderloin Sunrise

Riverside Apartments, 50 Golden Gate Avenue. Seventy-eight two- and three-room units. 1917. Architect: C. A. Meussdorffer.

Golden Gate Theatre, 1 Taylor Street. Theater and office building. 1922. Architect: G. Albert Lansburgh.

Conrad Alfred Meussdorffer, born 25 October 1871, was the son of German immigrants who had settled in San Francisco as pioneers in 1853. Meussdorffer first worked as a draftsman for Salfield and Kohlberg* and after two years was promoted to architect. In 1897, after a two-year partnership with Victor de Prosse, he opened his own business. Over the years, Meussdorffer became known as the architect of choice for luxury apartment buildings in San Francisco.

*Salfield and Kohlberg later designed the Adrian, Adams (Aarti) and La Rell (Ambika) hotels, and the Hetty (Shirley) and Klimm apartments in the Tenderloin.

Source: San Francisco History Center, S.F. Public Library
Unit block Golden Gate Avenue, 1926. On the right are the rear entrance and marquee of the Granada Theater (see also “Paramount Theater” in Part Two: Mid-Market).

December Morning

Hotel Boyd. 41 Jones Street. Store and rooming house with eighty-seven rooms and twenty-six baths. 1907. Architect: William Helbing. Former tenant: Herrington’s Bar.

The Boyd Hotel is sandwiched between the old Hibernia Bank and the St. Anthony Foundation. Renovated in 2006, it is now a master lease hotel managed by the Tenderloin Housing Clinic. The Boyd’s storefront was until the ’90s home to the immensely popular Herrington’s, one of several Irish bars that once dotted the Tenderloin streetscape.

Source: San Francisco History Center, S.F. Public Library (Photo: Mary Anne Kramer)
Herrington’s Bar, 1964.

Fallen from Grace

Hibernia Bank Building. 1 Jones Street.

Designed by Albert Pissis and completed in 1892, the Hibernia Bank Building suffered heavy fire damage following the 1906 earthquake, but it was soon after repaired. Professor Lin-Yun, Supreme Leader of Black Sect Tantric Buddhism at Its Fourth Stage, purchased the building in 2000, stating a desire to transform it into a Buddhist temple and school. Instead, the building was left empty and unmaintained, a magnet for drug dealers and homeless encampments (see also “Hibernia” in Part Two: Mid-Market).

Source: San Francisco History Center, S.F. Public Library
After the earthquake and fire, 1906.

One of the City’s true architectural treasures, the building’s exterior has suffered from years of neglect and abuse, but its interior has remained completely intact. Late in 2008, the building was purchased for $3.9 million by Seamus Naughten, who also owns the old KGO-TV building on Golden Gate Avenue. Although there is some uncertainty about its future use, Mr. Naughten plans to invest the $18 million necessary to renovate the building and bring it up to code.

One glorious morning in springtime, I photographed the Hibernia’s beautiful dome and parapet. In the background is the Renoir Hotel.

Evangeline

Civic Center Residence (formerly Salvation Army Girls Hotel, Young Women’s Boarding Home of the Salvation Army, the Evangeline). 44 McAllister Street. Rooming house with 211 rooms and fourteen baths. 1922. Architect: Norman R. Coulter.

Built “for working girls employed at a small wage” by The Salvation Army, The Evangeline has been renamed the Civic Center Residence by its current owner, the Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corporation.

Postcard, circa 1930.

Lower McAllister

2007 Survey

The massive granite structure on the right is the UN Plaza Federal Building.

Sentinel

Temple Methodist Church and William Taylor Hotel (1927), Empire Hotel (1936), McAllister Tower (1981). 100 McAllister Street. Church and palace hotel with 609 rooms and 391 baths. 1927. Architects: Miller and Pflueger and Lewis P. Hobart.

(right) Farrelworth Apartments. 601 O’Farrell Street.

About a year after I captured this image, I had the pleasure of gazing down at the City from atop the tower at 100 McAllister Street, a remarkable building that appears in a number of my Tenderloin and South of Market photographs. Built by the Methodist Church, it first opened as the luxury William Taylor Hotel in 1929; then, in 1936 the building was sold and reopened as the Empire Hotel. While its status as the tallest hotel west of the Mississippi was short-lived, at a height of 28 stories it remained by far the tallest building in the Tenderloin until the encroachment of the 493 foot Hilton San Francisco Tower I in 1971. The purchase of the McAllister tower in 1981 by UC Hastings College of the Law should ensure that this neighborhood landmark, still undergoing long-term and very expensive restoration, will be well cared for long into the future.

(left) Postcard, circa 1927. (right) Engraving, circa 1860. The apocalyptic stare and breathtaking beard belong to Methodist minister and “pioneer scourge of moral slackers,” William Taylor; from the frontispiece to his book, Seven Years Street Preaching in San Francisco—proof, if any were needed, that street preaching in San Francisco is an occupation as old as the City itself.

David Seward, CFO for UC Hastings, kindly took me on a personal tour of the tower, including a spot that I had long coveted visiting: the observation deck, where I was able to walk around in the open air, twenty-seven stories above the street, with the Tenderloin, Civic Center and South of Market spread out before me. Our time was limited, so I was able to take only a few photographs. If you examine them closely, you can see the spatial relationships between many of the buildings that I singled out in my other photographs.

Downtown

Since 1968, the year I moved to San Francisco, the Beaux Arts-inspired architecture that once defined the City’s downtown skyline has been occulted, if not replaced, by towering and impersonal skyscrapers of glass and steel.

Nob Hill

To the north toward Nob Hill, it is still possible to see some of the lovely and inviting city that arose from the ashes of the 1906 earthquake and fire; where the skyline still shows the graceful rise and fall of San Francisco’s hills.

Boundary Lines

In the upper left is the Flood Building at Powell and Market, which for many years was considered the eastern boundary of the Tenderloin. The diagonal swath of Market Street separates the Tenderloin on the left from South of Market on the right.

Hive

Gazing into the heart of the Tenderloin, we see the densest concentration of residential hotels and efficiency apartments in the City. Also apparent from this perspective is the uniformity of architectural style. Nearly all the buildings have details that were drawn from Renaissance and Baroque sources, manifesting the influence of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and the City Beautiful Movement on the many architects responsible for the district’s reconstruction.

Intersection

In the midst of century-old buildings rises the new Curran House at 145 Taylor Street.

Ad Art

A few doors down Turk Street from Jones is the old El Rosa Hotel (now the Helen), with its beautiful, old painted advertisement for 7-Up.

Saint Boniface

St. Boniface Church. 133 Golden Gate Avenue. 1902, rebuilt 1906. Architects: Brothers Adrian Weaver and Idelphonse Lethert. Originally served the German population of San Francisco.

The home of San Francisco’s Order of Franciscan Monks, Saint Boniface Church is next door to the order’s Saint Anthony Foundation and dining room. Established in 1950 to feed the poor by Franciscan Friar Alfred Boeddeker, the Saint Anthony Foundation provides clothing, shelter, and medical and social services for the poor and homeless, and its dining room feeds over 2,500 people every day.

Pulpit and lectern, St. Boniface Church.

Upon entering the new millennium, St. Boniface underwent a three-year, $12 million seismic retrofit and renovation of the church, tower and friary, and constructed a new middle school in the renovated shell of the former administration building. The sumptuous restorations of the church’s historic finishes and fixtures are breathtaking.

Source: San Francisco History Center, S.F. Public Library
Saint Boniface Church in ruins, 1906.

Source: San Francisco History Center, S.F. Public Library
Lower Golden Gate Avenue, 1944. The nearest building on the right is the friary of the Franciscan Fathers.

YMCA

YMCA (Shih Yu-Lang Central YMCA, 2002). 220 Golden Gate Avenue. Athletic facilities, offices, classrooms, auditorium, and hotel with 207 rooms and fifty-five baths. 1909. Architects: McDougall Brothers. Built with funds raised in the East after the 1906 fire.

Purchased by the Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corporation in 2007, the Central YMCA is slated for renovation and conversion to low-cost housing. The future new home of the Y is under construction on the 300 block of Golden Gate Avenue and is scheduled for completion in late 2010.

Postcard, circa 1909.

Postcard, circa 1925.

Film Exchange Buildings

2007 Survey

Film exchange. 201-211 Golden Gate Avenue. 1920. Architect: Albert Schroepfer (attributed).

Film exchange. 213 Golden Gate Avenue. 1920. Architect: Albert Schroepfer.

Film exchange. 215-229 Golden Gate Avenue. 1920. Architect: Albert Schroepfer (attributed).

Film exchange. 241-243 Golden Gate Avenue. 1916. Architect unknown.

Film exchange. 247 Golden Gate Avenue. 1911. Architect unknown.

The Ayse Manyas Kenmore Center, sales room and offices. 255 Golden Gate Avenue. 1916. Architect: Reid Brothers.

Beginning with the motion-sequence experiments of Eadweard Muybridge and his invention of the zoöpraxiscope in 1879, San Francisco has been a center of independent film making, distinguished by innovation in all areas of the film industry. In 1902, the Miles Brothers revolutionized film distribution by buying films from the studios and renting them to theaters, thus establishing the first centralized film exchange, the equivalent of a lending library for movie theaters. Many early film exchanges were located in Tenderloin buildings because of their proximity to Market Street theaters. By the mid-teens and early ‘20s, it was evident that celluloid’s volatility made ordinary buildings unsafe for storing movies, necessitating the construction of fireproof, reinforced concrete structures specifically designed for storing film.

Earle

Earle Hotel. 248 Golden Gate Avenue. Rooming house with twenty-nine rooms and nine baths. 1913. Architect: Charles E.J. Rogers.

What I like most about the Earle is its side wall, which shows the roof lines of now-departed neighboring buildings.

Balboa

Balboa Hotel. 120 Hyde Street. Stores and rooming house with forty rooms and three baths. 1913. Architect unknown.

The Balboa Hotel is an unobtrusive building on Hyde Street, near Golden Gate Avenue. The ground floor is taken up by a variety of small businesses: a restaurant, a laundry and a tiny convenience store. The hotel’s facade would be entirely unremarkable if it weren’t for the beautiful stained glass marquee over its entrance.

Oasis

Oasis Apartments (formerly YMCA Hotel). 351 Turk Street. Hotel with 386 rooms and thirty-seven baths converted to apartments. 1928. Architect: Frederick H. Meyer.

This photograph of mine accompanied a short article in a neighborhood monthly newspaper about a fire in one of the Oasis’s rooms that had been extinguished by the automatic room sprinkler before the Fire Department arrived. A two-year struggle by housing activists to have sprinklers installed in all the rooms of every residential hotel in San Francisco was at its peak, making this a newsworthy event. I happened to be walking by the Oasis at the time, so I was able to watch the drama unfold. I took pictures and interviewed the battalion chief, all with a view toward submitting a brief article to the neighborhood paper along with three or four photographs. The editor chose this picture to accompany the article even though it had virtually nothing to do with the story other than being a photograph of the building where the fire occurred.

Postcard, circa 1928.

A closer look at the Oasis reveals the artifice of its architecture. The arcade is a deception, used to relieve the starkness of what would otherwise be just tall, rectangular boxes of red brick.

Epitaph

2007 Survey

Cosmopolitan Apartments (formerly Hotel LaSalle, Cosmopolitan Hotel). 225 Hyde Street. Hotel with 128 rooms and baths, converted to apartments. 1927. Architect unknown.

Flats. 226 Hyde Street. Bar and three five-room units. 1911. Architect unknown. Trompe l’oeil mural on south wall by John Wullbrandt, 1983.

The parking lot on the corner of Turk and Hyde is the site of the legendary Black Hawk nightclub where, on the evening of April 21, 1961, Miles Davis recorded his landmark album, Miles Davis In Person Friday Night at the Blackhawk, San Francisco.

Photo courtesy of Robert and Marina McClay
Local artist Robert McClay (left) and John Lewis of the Modern Jazz Quartet outside the entrance to the Black Hawk nightclub, 1959.

The Modern Jazz Quartet’s first West Coast club date was at the Black Hawk. Other notables who performed there included Shelly Manne, Thelonius Monk, Cal Tjader, Vince Guaraldi, Mongo Santamaria, Charlie Parker, Lester Young, Billie Holiday, Art Tatum, Dave Brubeck, Dizzy Gillespie, John Coltrane, and many more. Johnny Mathis was discovered at the Black Hawk. When a local sextet brought young Johnny to one of the club’s regular Sunday afternoon jam sessions in 1955, club co-owner Helen Noga heard him sing and decided that she wanted to manage his career. Shortly afterward, Johnny got a regular gig singing at Ann Dee’s 440 Club. Helen talked the head of jazz A&R at Columbia Records, George Avakian, into seeing him. After coming to the club and hearing Johnny sing, Avakian sent a telegram to his record company: “Have found phenomenal 19 year old boy who could go all the way.” And go all the way he did.

Page

Page Hotel (formerly Page Apartments). 161 Leavenworth Street. Stores and rooming house with forty-eight rooms and twelve baths. 1907. Architect: Martens and Coffey.

The Page Hotel sits at the intersection of Leavenworth and Turk streets, one of the Tenderloin’s riskier locations after dark. Drug dealers abound and battles in their ongoing turf wars are occasionally fought here. On the other side of Turk Street, visible to the right, is the Hotel Hurley.

Hospitality House

Hospitality House Community Arts Studio and Gallery (formerly film exchange). 146 Leavenworth Street. 1922. Engineer: L. H. Nishkian.

Across Leavenworth from the Page and providing a counterbalance to the dark side is Hospitality House, an open art studio with classes and its own gallery that serves both the neighborhood’s dispossessed and residents of SROs. Anyone who wants to explore self-expression in nearly any medium, but hasn’t the means to buy materials or a studio in which to work is welcome there.

Hurley

Hotel Hurley (formerly Kenyon Hotel, later Hotel DeWalt). 201 Leavenworth Street. 1914. Engineer: Albert W. Burgren.

Both singular and spooky, the Hurley’s dark-violet neon tubing is somewhat difficult to read from down the street, but it complements the sepulchral colors of the building very nicely.

Leavenworth above Eddy

2007 Survey

Hotel Verona. 317 Leavenworth Street.

Hotel Klondike (1933). 325 Leavenworth Street. Rooming house with seventeen rooms and three baths.  1907. Architect: John Zimmerman.

Hotel Rocklin (1914-1923), Hotel Black (1933), Western Hotel (1982). 335 Leavenworth Street. Rooming house with forty rooms and seventeen baths.  1907. Architects: Welsh and Carey.

Trinity Apartments. 345 Leavenworth Street. Thirty-one two-room units. 1919. Architect: Edward E. Young.

Aarti

Hotel Adams (1914-1922), Hotel Lenard (1933), Aarti Cooperative Hotel (1996). 391 Leavenworth Street. Stores and rooming house with fifty-five rooms and fifteen baths. 1906. Architects: Salfield and Kohlberg.

The first building purchased by the Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corporation (in 1981), the Aarti became a joint project between TNDC and Conard House, a non profit provider of assistance to people with mental health issues. Between the Aarti and the Senator runs a gated cul-de-sac named Cohen Alley that has been transformed into what is called the Tenderloin National Forest, a little oasis of greenery and community art.

Senator

Hotel Senator. 519 Ellis Street. Hotel with 114 rooms (1923), converted to eighty-six apartments (1991). 1923. Architects: Baumann and Jose.

The Senator lost its beautiful cornice and the double-hung sash of its graceful bow windows in 1991, when the building was converted from a hotel to apartments.

Source: San Francisco History Center, S.F. Public Library
Hotel Senator, 1924.

The Senator’s restored blade sign is a masterpiece of sign-making art, although I wouldn’t want to live in any of the rooms that are near it.

Postcard, circa 1923.

When the Senator’s blade sign was restored, I anticipated the eventual restoration of the marquee. Several years passed after I took this photograph. The marquee was at last removed, but instead of being restored, it was replaced by a much smaller plywood copy, a poor imitation of the original.

Ellis and Leavenworth

2007 Survey

Waldorf Apartments. 516 Ellis Street. Seventy-six rooms and forty-four baths. 1910. Architect: William Helbing.

Calvin Apartments (1914), August Apartments (1922), Gibson Apartments (1929), Sierra Madre Apartments (1998). 421 Leavenworth Street. Forty-eight two- and three-room units. 1913. Architect: Rousseau and Rousseau.

Farrelworth Apartments. 601 O’Farrell Street.

Ellis below Leavenworth

2007 Survey

Arlington Hotel. 480 Ellis Street. Hotel with 200 rooms and eighty-nine baths, dining room. 1907. Architect: Frank T. Shea. Current owners: The St. Vincent de Paul Society and the Lurie Company.

Klimm Apartments. 460 Ellis Street. Twenty one-, two- and three-room units. 1913. Architects: Salfield and Kohlberg.

Junipero Serra Apartments (formerly Ellis Hotel Apartments). 450 Ellis Street. Thirty two- and three-room units. 1909. Architect: L. M. Gardner.

Bharatiya Mandel Hall (formerly Waitresses Union). 440 Ellis Street. Hall and office building. 1938. Architect: William F. Gunnison.

Janice Mirikitani–Glide Family Youth and Child Care Building (formerly transfer and storage building). 434 Ellis Street. 1926. Architects: O’Brien Brothers. City Art Program mural on east wall “An Art Works SF Production” 2001.

Postcard, circa 1908.

Postcard, circa 1915.

Source: San Francisco History Center, S.F. Public Library
Ellis Street, east from Leavenworth, 1945. The Arlington Hotel is on the left; just left of center is the Hotel Adair (see next image).

Cornice (Reflected Light)

Lassen Apartments (formerly Hotel Adair). 441 Ellis Street. 1915. Architect: J. R. Miller.

One morning, while on a rambling walk through the Tenderloin in search of subject matter, I let my feet make their own decisions without any conscious directive (I’ll sometimes do this when I’m in need of inspiration). Walking down Jones Street and reaching Ellis, my feet turned right and headed west. My eyes were pointed upward, as they often are, so the first thing I saw on rounding the corner was the sunlight reflected onto this beautiful cornice, revealing details that are normally lost in shadow.

Windeler

Windeler Apartments. 424 Ellis Street. Sixty-two one- and two-room units. 1915. Owner: Peter Windeler, secretary Enterprise Brewing Company. Architect: August Nordin. “424 Ellis Apartments, Rooms” on bronze plaque next to entry.

The Windeler bears the unmistakable imprimatur of its designer, August Nordin, namely its unique wedding-cake cornice, belt course and florid ornamentation (see also “Rainy Day Sunset”).

Jones and Ellis

2007 Survey

Mendel Apartments. 415 Jones Street. Seventy two-room units. 1912. Architect: Frederick H. Meyer (1912), addition Grace Jewett (1919).

Hotel Aldrich. 439 Jones Street.

Hotel Garland. 505 O’Farrell Street. Stores and hotel with eighty-five rooms and seventy-three baths. 1913. Architects: Hladik and Thayer.

Coast Hotel. 516 O’Farrell Street.

(right) Riveira Hotel. 420 Jones Street.

Aldrich

Aldrich Hotel. 439 Jones Street. Rooming house with fifty-four rooms and fifteen baths. 1910. Architect: Charles Peter Weeks.

This is the Aldrich Hotel’s blade sign in 2003.

And here is the same sign three years later, following its restoration. Old blade signs are part of what makes the Tenderloin unique, and the preservation of these artifacts greatly reinforces a sense of place for residents and visitors alike.

Cultural Imperatives

Riveira Hotel (formerly Avon Hotel). 420 Jones Street. Stores and hotel with thirty-eight rooms and seventeen baths. 1907. Current owner: Conard House. Architects: Crim and Scott.

The Riveira (sic) is the brown building with white trim in the background of this photograph, one of my favorite images. The day I tried to photograph the hotel I couldn’t find a vantage point that pleased me. As I moved about, looking for an interesting angle and perspective, I began to hear a clangorous but muffled sound of drums and gongs being pounded in erratic syncopation, with a rising and falling intensity, like Chinese lion dance music. I was irresistibly drawn around the corner onto Ellis Street to the music’s source: an odd little building that had often piqued my curiosity.

What grabbed me was the low hood that projected outward from the building’s façade. Here was an architectural detail with presence and a personality! It was so patently home-made, with loving attention paid to form and style, but constructed with the cheapest and strangest of materials. The barrel tiles were aluminum soft drink cans, covered with sheets of some indefinable material, and the plywood was clearly interior grade. Yet the colors were always kept bright with periodic coats of fresh paint, a sign of care that was completely endearing. I had to photograph it, and thus I found the way to frame the Riveira.

A short time after I captured this image, the little building was leveled by a bulldozer and the lot has remained empty ever since.

Jones below Ellis

2007 Survey

Hotel Herald. 308 Eddy Street.

Garage. 333 Jones Street. 1930. Designer unknown.

Stores. 335-341 Jones Street. 1919. Architect: T. Paterson Ross.

Apartment hotel with one-, two- and three-room units. 345 Jones Street. 1912. Architects: O’Brien Brothers.

St. George Apartments (formerly Gashwiler Apartments). 421 Ellis Street. Eighteen two-, three- and four-room units. 1907. Architect: Julius Krafft.

The storefront at 335 Jones Street (identifiable in this photo by the blank, pink-colored blade sign) was formerly the Black Rose, a transgender bar that featured live impersonations of famous female singers. The St. George Apartments were originally named for Laura Lowell Gashwiler, widow of a gold mining millionaire and one of the first kindergarten teachers in the United States.

Mentone

Hotel Mentone. 387 Ellis Street. Hotel with eighty rooms and eighty baths. 1913. Architects: Smith and Stewart.

Across the street from the Riveira Hotel is the Hotel Mentone. I have always found the name Mentone somewhat amusing. It brings up images of steamy locker rooms and old-fashioned gyms smelling of sweat. The hotel has been renovated and repainted since I took this photograph. It is now more dignified in appearance, but nowhere near as interesting as it used to be. Fortunately, the unique lettering on the marquee and the corner blade sign has been preserved. It is a link to the past, to a time when more San Franciscans lived in residential hotels than in any other type of domicile.

Postcard, circa 1915.

Until 1930, sixty percent of San Franciscans were permanent hotel residents. Between 1975 and 1980, landowners eliminated 6,085 units, almost a fifth of the City’s entire stock of residential hotel units. Today, San Francisco’s residential hotels house nearly 30,000 people.

Ellis below Jones

2007 Survey

Mendel Apartments. 415 Jones Street.

Riveira Hotel. 420 Jones Street.

Empty lot (see “Cultural Imperatives”).

Hetty Apartments (formerly Shirley Apartments). 376 Ellis Street. Stores and apartment building with thirty-two two-room units. 1911. Architects: Salfield and Kohlberg.

Verona Apartments. 370 Ellis Street. Twenty-seven two-room units. 1915. Architects: Smith and Stewart.

2007 Survey

Field Apartments (formerly Arlin Apartments, Bryar Apartments). 344 Ellis Street. Thirty two-room units. 1909. Contractor: Moses Fisher.

Taylor and Ellis

Glide Memorial Methodist Church. 301 Taylor Street. 1930. Architect: James W. Plachek. Cornerstone: “Glide Memorial Evangelistic Center 1930.”

Two doors up Taylor Street from Glide Memorial Church is the Hotel Mark Twain (formerly the Tilden Hotel), where, in 1949, Billie Holiday was arrested during a raid by federal narcotics agents, who claimed they found the singer in possession of opium and a pipe. She was later acquitted, after being defended in court by San Francisco attorney Jake Ehrlich, who had previously defended such famous figures as Sally Stanford and Gene Krupa.

Ellis and Mason

Thai Noodle Cafe and Hostel. 201-225 Ellis Street. (First occupants: “cigar store, boot black stand, saloon, and two stores,” rooming house with twenty-five rooms and eleven baths; later, Diamond Hotel). 1910. Architect: Smith O’Brien.

Hamman Sultan Baths (originally Burns Hamman Baths). 227-231 Ellis Street. Bath house with salt water plunge. 1910. Architect: Smith O’Brien.

The former Diamond Hotel, here photographed at one of my favorite times of day, is on the eastern border of the Uptown Tenderloin Historic District. The diamond-shaped panels along the tops of the second and third stories are marble insets. The Hamman Baths is one of two neighborhood bathhouses with plunges that were filled with saltwater from Ocean Beach, catering to residents of lodging houses and rooming houses where water was a once-a-week provision. In the early twentieth century, a public bathhouse may also have been cheaper than the cost of a bath in a hotel. The Larkin Baths, built in 1915 and long ago demolished, were at Bush and Larkin.

Columbia

Columbia Hotel. 411 O’Farrell Street. Stores and hotel with 110 rooms and eighty-two baths. 1909. Architects: Sutton and Weeks.

With its yellow-painted facade and mansard roof, and its bright green, five-story-tall, Deco corner blade sign, the Columbia was definitely an eye-catcher. It stood out amid the surrounding architecture like a heretic in a crowd of conformists. In 2008, it returned to the fold when it was repainted in a palette of subdued earthen colors. I must admit I liked the Columbia far more when it was heterodox and so, in remembrance, I offer this photo.

Source: San Francisco History Center, S.F. Public Library
O’Farrell and Taylor, 1955. Newscopy: “Photo shows the southeast corner of Taylor and O’Farrell Streets, chosen today as the site of a new downtown air line bus terminal. The terminal will occupy the area covered by the corner hotel, and probably will extend to take in the Bohemian Garage on O’Farrell Street, owned by Larry Barrett.” All of the buildings in this photograph are now gone, and the entire block has been taken over by the enormous Hilton Hotel complex.

Winton

Winton Hotel. 445 O’Farrell Street. Stores and rooming house with 102 rooms and thirty-one baths. 1907. Architect: William Helbing.

The Winton Hotel has what I like to call “SRO windows,” meaning the arched, deep-set windows seen in bearing walls of brick structures erected in the first decade after 1906. In addition to the load of floors, roof, furniture and people, bearing walls must also support their own ponderous weight. The arched lintels keep the window openings from caving in by laterally distributing the weight of the wall above them.

Incandescent

Coast Hotel. 516 O’Farrell Street.

Pacific Bay Inn. 520 Jones Street.

Fifth Church of Christ Scientist. 450 O’Farrell Street. 1923. Architect: Carl Werner. Marble cornerstone with “1923.”

This image exemplifies why I love San Francisco so much. Fiery sunsets such as this set my mind and emotions ablaze, making life’s problems seem mere trifles; elevating me to some higher plane of awareness by making me conscious of what a tiny cog I am in the vast machinery of the Universe.

Ironically and unbeknown to me, around the time I took this photograph, the Fifth Church of Christ, Scientist was condemned by the City and will most likely be demolished.

Pacific Bay Inn

Hotel Proctor (1907), Miles Hotel (1909), Sequoia Hotel (1923), Pacific Bay Inn (1984). 520 Jones Street. Hotel with eighty-nine rooms and forty-two baths. 1907. Architects: Welsh and Carey.

While there are hotels and apartment buildings all over San Francisco that have Classical Revival ornamental details fashioned from metal, intended to create the illusion of carved stone, the Uptown Tenderloin has by far the largest and densest concentration of these buildings.

The Pacific Bay Inn often leaves its neon sign turned on during the day, which allowed me to capture it, appropiately, against a backdrop of summertime fog coming in from the bay.

Rooftops

I take special delight in rooftop views. From such a vantage point, the world below becomes a separate reality, as it always does when one is looking down from on high. The rooftops in these pictures are in a way even further removed from reality, because distance has been compressed by a telephoto lens. The little cube-like structures with vented skylights are rooftop exits for stairwells, which crown most all of the hotels and apartment buildings in the Tenderloin. I was seeing them more as abstract shapes on the day I took these photographs—patterns of rectangles, cubes and pyramids.

Summer Fog

In 2004, I spent the Fourth of July with a couple of friends in their apartment on the seventh floor of the Pacific Bay Inn, which afforded me an excellent view of the lower Tenderloin. It was a typical San Francisco summer day, warm and sunny until around 4:00 in the afternoon, when the fog, lots of it, began to pour in from the ocean.

Later that evening, I took this photograph from the same window.

Jones Hotel

Jones Hotel (formerly Hotel Bruce, later Newport Hotel). 515 Jones Street. Rooming house with twenty-one rooms and nine baths. 1913. Architect: Joseph Cahen.

Tucked behind the Coast Hotel and across the street from the Pacific Bay Inn is the Jones Hotel, a charming little doll house with French windows and green-and-black glazed tile around the entrance.

Shawmut

Hotel Shawmut, Marymount Hotel (1913), Coast Hotel (2007). 516 O’Farrell Street. Stores and hotel with 140 rooms and eighty-three baths. 1912. Architect: L. B. Dutton.

If you look up from Jones Street at the back of what is now the Coast Hotel, you’ll find this lovely fading relic of a time gone by. Shawmut is the original Native American name for the neck of land on which the city of Boston, Massachusetts was founded. Anglicized, the word has also come to mean spring. The Shawmut was so named because many of its rooms have private baths, something of a luxury at the time the hotel was built.

The shadows cast by tall buildings often create a game of hide-and-seek with my subject matter. I captured this image of the Shawmut one morning about an hour after sunrise. Visible in the shadows is part of the Pacific Bay Inn.

Golden Era

2007 Survey

Sweden House Hotel (formerly Hotel Stratton). 570 O’Farrell Street. Rooming house with forty-two rooms and ten baths. 1907. Architect unknown.

Abbey Garage. 550 O’Farrell Street. 1924. Owner: Mount Olivet Cemetery Association. Architect: W.H. Crim Jr.

Farallone Apartments. 540 O’Farrell Street. Thirty-six two- and three-room units. 1922. Architect: August G. Headman.

Coast Hotel. 516 O’Farrell Street.

The name of the vegetarian restaurant in the lower level of the Sweden House Hotel is also an apt name for the time in San Francisco’s history (between 1906 and 1931) during which the Tenderloin was entirely rebuilt.

Leavenworth Ridge

2007 Survey

Harding Apartments. 595 O’Farrell Street. Store and apartment building with nine two-room units. 1918. Architect: C.O. Clausen.

Farrelworth Apartments. 601 O’Farrell Street. Eighty two-room units. 1918. Architect: H.C. Baumann.

Alexander Hamilton Condominiums (formerly Alexander Hamilton Hotel). 631 O’Farrell Street. Apartment hotel with 195 units of three to nine rooms. 1930. Architect: Albert H. Larsen.

Admiral

Admiral Hotel. 608 O’Farrell Street. Stores and hotel with thirty-three rooms and thirty-three baths. 1916. Architects: Foulkes and Lowe.

Tall, pink, wide and sporting a cornice that looks positively aerodynamic, the Admiral Hotel is anything but subtle. The fan-shaped marquee over the entrance is rather special, too. At one time, the Admiral was fairly classy as residential hotels go, but its still-elegant exterior belies how seedy the interior has become. Unfortunately, a presentable exterior that hides living conditions ranging from sub-standard to outright hellish is typical of many SROs these days, although this is slowly changing as non-profit housing companies take over more of these hotels.

Time Portal

Annandale House. 626 O’Farrell Street. Store and rooming house with fourteen rooms and four baths. 1908. Architect: George A. Dodge.

Near the only twenty-four-hour store in the Tenderloin was a little laundromat with the unlikely name of Snow Bell. The Snow Bell Laundromat for many years occupied the ground floor of a tiny, old rooming house that I have always found intriguing, not because it is decrepit, but because it is so modestly genteel in its decrepitude. It is a very old building. Along one side is Harlem Alley, a narrow lane leading to a small, gated parking area that is mostly hidden by the Admiral Hotel next door. The distance from the edge of the sidewalk to the gate is no more than six feet, but the six feet of wall that is exposed there speaks volumes.

Summer Day – O’Farrell Street

2007 Survey

Ben Hur Apartments. 400 Hyde Street. Sixty-nine two-room units. 1926. Owner and builder: Louis Johnson.

Sovereign Apartments. 666 O’Farrell Street. Thirty-three two- and three-room units. 1924. Architects: Baumann and Jose.

Ada Court Apartments. (formerly Hermione Apartments.) 656 O’Farrell Street. Seventeen two- and three-room units. 1916. Architect: Edward E. Young.

Farlow Apartments. (formerly Madrone Apartments.) 646 O’Farrell Street. Eleven two-room units. 1915. Architect: C. O. Clausen.

Allen Garage. 640 O’Farrell Street. 1924. Architects: O’Brien Brothers.

Apartment building with eight two- and three-room units. 628 O’Farrell Street. 1921. Contractor: Monson Brothers.

Annandale House. 626 O’Farrell Street.

The Snow Bell Laundromat has been replaced by the Dim Sum Bar, a major improvement, although Harlem Alley is now gated, making that wonderful side wall inaccessible. The Annandale was occupied as a private hospital in 1929 and the ground floor was a Safeway store in 1937.

Upper Tenderloin

2007 Survey

Pontchartrain Apartments. 685 Geary Street. Store and apartment building with forty two-room units. 1916. Architects: Rousseau and Rousseau.

Colonade Apartments. 550 Leavenworth Street. Twenty two-room units. 1915. Architects: Rousseau and Rousseau.

Aragon Apartments. 540 Leavenworth Street. Forty-three two- and three-room units. 1914. Designer: David C. Coleman.

In San Francisco, property values tend to increase in direct relation to both altitude and due north on the compass.

2007 Survey

Stanford Apartments. 795 Geary Street.

Reynolds Apartments (1915), Lareme Apartments (1923), Jervis Apartments (1933-1937). 534 Hyde Street. Twelve two- and three-room units. 1912. Architects: Hladik and Thayer.

Arcadia Apartments. 522 Hyde Street. Fifteen three-room units. 1910. Architect: W.G. Hind.

Hydrangea

Hydrangea Apartments. 525 Hyde Street. Fourteen two-room units. 1914. Architect unknown.

Nite Cap

Nite Cap Lounge. 699 O’Farrell Street. Corner storefront of the Ruthland Apartments (691 O’Farrell Street). Circa 1916. Architects: Rousseau and Rousseau.

Once in a while, I’ll pay a visit to the Nite Cap, one of the friendliest neighborhood bars in the Tenderloin. It’s small and cozy, with a pool table and a jukebox filled with an eclectic mix of rock, jazz, and R&B. With the exception of the pool table, the interior still looks and feels much the same as it did the first time I saw it, nearly forty years ago.

O’Farrell above Hyde

2007 Survey

La Rell Apartments (1918), Lormer Rooms (1953), Weiland Hotel (1964), Hotel Kinmon South (1982), Ambika Hotel (2007). 788 O’Farrell Street. Stores and apartment building converted to rooming house with twenty-six rooms and ten baths. 1914. Architects: Salfield and Kohlberg.

Edgeworth Hotel. 770 O’Farrell Street.

Cristobal Apartments. 750 O’Farrell Street.

O’Farrell Garage. 740 O’Farrell Street. 1922. Engineer: James H. Hjul.

Apartment building with twenty-three two- and three-room units. 730 O’Farrell Street. 1922. Owner and builder: D.J. Clancy.

Garage (originally stores). 720 O’Farrell Street. 1930. Owner and builder: John Seale.

Rainy Day Sunset

Cristobal Apartments. 750 O’Farrell Street. Forty-seven two- and three-room units. 1913. Architect: August Nordin.

The Cristobal’s extravagant ornamentation was a hallmark of its designer, Swedish-born San Francisco architect August Nordin (1869–1936). The row of Art Nouveau heads, dynamic cast-iron balcony supports and repetitive geometric patterns combine to create a jewel box effect that is as charming as it is unusual.

According to the January 1936 issue of Architect and Engineer, Nordin designed over 300 structures, including single family residences, flats, apartment houses, the Altamont Hotel on 16th Street (1912), the Swedish American Hall (1907) and the building that is home to the famed Buena Vista Cafe (1911).

Edgeworth

Edgeworth Hotel. 770 O’Farrell Street. Rooming house with forty rooms and twenty baths. 1914. Architect: W.J. Cuthbertson.

Whenever I see this building my mind is flooded with memories of my distant past. I grew up in a mid-western city, in a white-collar neighborhood on the east side of town. My mother’s parents, Grandma and Grandpa Tobin, lived on the west side, in a predominantly blue-collar area known as the Hilltop. Theirs was a large, working-class house of dark red brick with white trim, on a street lined with huge old elm trees. Other streets in that part of town were lined with apartment buildings and rooming houses that looked very much like the Edgeworth, except that many had storefronts on the ground floor. One such storefront, on Sullivant Avenue, was a tavern known as the Tap Room.

The proprietor of this establishment was my other grandma, Bertha Ellinger. She would sometimes take care of me for a day or two when my parents wanted some time off. If Grandma E. had to work while I was staying with her, she would just take me along. A bottle of pop from the cooler, potato chips, and a Swiss cheese sandwich on rye bread with French’s mustard would keep me occupied while she tended the bar. On hot summer days it was always dark and cool in the Tap Room. Bertha’s clientele, all of them blue-collar workers, were friendly with me and would sometimes tease me because I was quiet. Grandma E’s stern, Germanic nature did not inspire frivolity.

It’s strange, how these long-lost memories are brought into sudden, sharp focus by the Edgeworth, a hotel more than 2,000 miles and half a century away from my childhood.

Hartland

Hotel Hartland (formerly Hotel Gartland). 909 Geary Street. Stores and hotel with 150 rooms and 129 baths. 1913. Architects: Rousseau and Rousseau.

For reasons that are to me a mystery, the Hartland’s sign was completely ignored when the hotel was renovated. Woerner’s has been a Tenderloin landmark for more than half a century.

2007 Survey

Hotel Hartland. 909 Geary Street.

Geary Arms Apartments. 925 Geary Street. Forty two- and three-room units. 1913. Architects: Rousseau and Rousseau.

At once both elegant and imposing, and abundant with ornamental detail, the Hartland Hotel and Geary Arms Apartments are two of the neighborhood’s most beautiful residential buildings. Not incidentally, both were designed by the same architectural firm.

Briscoe

Briscoe Apartments. 946 Geary Street. Nine two- and three-room units. 1916. Architect unknown.

The Briscoe is across Geary Street from the Geary Arms and next to the Edinburgh Castle, a perennially popular watering hole, in what is locally known as the Tendernob, the area where the somewhat fuzzy social, cultural, and architectural boundaries of the Tenderloin and lower Nob Hill overlap.

Zubelda

California Hotel (formerly Hotel Toronto, Wesley Hotel, Leahi Hotel). 910 Geary Street. Stores and rooming house with forty-one rooms and eight baths. 1909. Architect unknown.

While working on a survey of the Tenderloin, I discovered another very old painted advertisement, one that has weathered the ravages of time quite well when you consider that it is nearly one hundred years old.

Alhambra

Alahambra Apartments. 860 Geary Street. Forty-one two- and three-room units, penthouse and dome. 1913. Architect: James Francis Dunn.

Most striking of the three Tenderloin buildings designed by James Francis Dunn is the Alhambra. According to local legend, its most famous tenant was Rudolph Valentino, who used the penthouse and dome as his San Francisco playhouse, where he could frolic with his paramours away from the bright lights and prying eyes of Hollywood.

Union

Hotel Union (formerly Rhodema Hotel, San Carlos Hotel). 811 Geary Street. Hotel with sixty rooms and sixty baths. 1925. Architects: Smith and Glass.

From 1969 to 1977, science fiction, fantasy and horror writer Fritz Leiber lived at the Union Hotel, in room 507. My introduction to Fritz Leiber’s writing was The Mind Spider & Other Stories, a paperback collection of his short horror stories that I bought in 1962. I was twelve years old and had a voracious appetite for horror, which I fed with a steady stream of thirty-five cent paperbacks. By the time I had finished reading The Mind Spider, I was a devotee of Fritz Leiber. Fortunately for me, Leiber was a prolific writer. I continued to buy his books through the ’70s, making most of my purchases at City Lights Books after moving to San Francisco in 1968.

One of the first books by Leiber that I bought from City Lights was Our Lady of Darkness, which takes place in San Francisco. The story’s protagonist, a literary simulacrum of Leiber, lives in a hotel at 811 Geary Street. Such a thrill it was to read this story, one of his best, replete with descriptions of places and landmarks that were just beginning to feel familiar to me. God, I loved living here! I still do.

Geary and Hyde

2007 Survey

Earl Court Apartments. 747 Geary Street. Twenty-one three-room units. 1922. Architect: Sylvain Schnaittacher.

Rossmoor Apartments. 765 Geary Street. 1911.

Apartment building with thirty-six two- and three-room units. 775 Geary Street. 1922. Architect: Edward E. Young.

Stanford Apartments (formerly St. Anthony Apartments). 795 Geary Street. Forty-eight two- and three-room units. 1912. Architects: O’Brien and Werner.

Built in 1911, the Macbeth (now the Rossmoor) was one of the first studio or efficiency apartment buildings in San Francisco, if not the United States. Designed by Charles Peter Weeks, it was an idea whose time had come, reflecting a shift in the housing market from hotels to apartments and proving itself to be ideally suited for Tenderloin apartment dwellers. Other buildings designed by Weeks include the Hotel Aldrich at 439 Jones, stores at 480 O’Farrell, and the Hotel Hacienda (now Vantaggio Suites) at 580 O’Farrell.

Rossmoor Apartments (formerly Macbeth Apartments). 765 Geary Street. Forty-eight one-, two- and three-room units. 1911. Architect: Charles Peter Weeks.

Geary and Jones

2007 Survey

Hotel St. Claire (formerly Oliver Hotel). 585 Geary Street. Hotel with forty-six one- and two-room units. 1912. Architects: Hladik and Thayer.

Hotel Nazareth. 556 Jones Street.

Davenport Hotel (1933), Commonwealth Hotel (1952), Hotel Pierre (1982). 540 Jones Street. Hotel with eighty-eight rooms with baths. 1926. Architect: H.C. Baumann.

Pacific Bay Inn. 520 Jones Street.

Abbey Apartments (formerly Athmore Apartments). 450 Jones Street. Apartment hotel with fifty-four rooms and fifteen baths in two- and three-room units. 1909. Architects: Sutton and Weeks.

Nazareth

Nazareth Hotel (formerly Hotel Towanda, Hotel Louie). 556 Jones Street. Hotel with fifty-six rooms and forty-six baths. 1913. Architect: A.A. Schroepfer. Engineer: H.J. Brunnier.

The Nazareth Hotel sits at the edge of the Tenderloin on the corner of Geary and Jones. Its battered, weather-beaten sign is awkward and far from beautiful, but it was the sign that attracted me, not the hotel. After some searching I found the sign’s home, framed against the visual anarchy of a tangle of nearby fire escapes and pipes.

Magic Hour

This parting shot places the Tenderloin within a larger perspective. From the east entry steps to City Hall, the northeast view encompasses four districts. Some of the flags that line Civic Center Plaza flutter in the foreground. Behind the Civic Center steam plant stack, which looms over the northeast corner of McAllister and Larkin, is the McAllister Hotel; to its left are the Rainbow Apartments, and behind it, in the Tenderloin, is UC Hastings Law School. Also representing the Tenderloin are the red-brick Oasis Apartments facing the Turk Street Mosser Tower, and the monolithic Hilton SF Tower I, which dwarfs everything around it. The dome flying the American flag is part of the Hilton complex. Arguably the most famous building in the Union Square District, the St. Francis Hotel is seen here to the left and behind the Oasis. A Financial District landmark at 555 California Street, the red granite Bank of America building is twelve blocks distant as the crow flies.

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