Cadillac_Hotel_(San_Francisco,_California)

Cadillac Hotel (San Francisco, California)

Cadillac Hotel (San Francisco, California)

Historic building in California, US

The Cadillac Hotel is a historic building from c. 1907 – c. 1908 in the Tenderloin neighborhood of San Francisco, California, U.S.. It was the first non-profit single-residence occupancy (SRO) hotel in the Western United States.[1] Since 2015, the first two floors of the building is the home to the Tenderloin Museum, a cultural history museum dedicated to the neighborhood.[2][3][4] It was called the A.A. Louderback Building, and nicknamed "The House of Welcome" during the early 20th-century.[5]

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The Cadillac Hotel has been listed as a San Francisco Designated Landmark since 1985;[6][7] and is part of the NRHP-listed Uptown Tenderloin Historic District since 2009.[8] The building also has a historical marker, erected by Uptown Tenderloin, Inc..[9]

History

The Cadillac Hotel was designed by architectural firm, Meyer and O'Brien (Frederick Herman Meyer and Michael Smith O'Brien) as a hotel for client Andrew A. Louderback (1831–1926).[6][10] It is a four-story steel beam building with reinforced brick, with a three-part design in a Renaissance Revival/Baroque Revival architectural style with the influence of Art Nouveau.[1][11] In the early 19th-century, the building had 180 guest rooms, a ballroom, and the first floor had many retail stores.[12] It was built right after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire.[11] It pre-dated the majority of the residential building in the Tenderloin neighborhood, which occurred years later around the opening of the Panama–Pacific International Exposition of 1915.[6]

From 1924 until 1992, the Cadillac Hotel housed the Newman’s Gym, founded by Billy Newman.[1] It was noted for being one of the oldest boxing facility in the country, and the practice space for Muhammad Ali, Joe Louis, Jack Dempsey, George Foreman, and Sugar Ray Robinson.[1]

In the 1960s, businessman Donald Fisher owned the building, and stripped away many of the historical details from the architecture.[12]

In the 1970s and 1980s, single-residence occupancy (SRO) and tenant rights activism grew, along with a desire to preserve the Tenderloin. Community activist Leroy Looper and Reality House West purchased the building in 1979, with the goal of creating housing for the homeless.[1] Lopper rehabilitated the Cadillac Hotel building through the help of various grants, and housed some 160 tenants.[1]

In 2015, Tenderloin Museum (formerly Tenderloin History Museum) moved into the ground floor of the building.[12] The Cadillac operates as a "shelter plus care hotel" in modern-day.[12] In 2023, the building made the news with the elevator breaking many times a year, and trapping vulnerable residents.[13][14]

See also

References

  1. [1]
    Young, Kerri (2021-01-19). "Landmark Tuesdays: The Cadillac Hotel". San Francisco Heritage. Retrieved 2024-01-14.
  2. [2]
    Rosato Jr., Joe (2015-08-06). "San Francisco's New Tenderloin Museum: Stories Beyond the Grit". NBC Bay Area. Retrieved 2024-01-14.
  3. [3]
    "New projects poised to finally reshape S.F.'s gritty Tenderloin neighborhood". San Francisco Business Times. August 6, 2015. Retrieved 2024-01-14.
  4. [4]
    "Tenderloin History Museum exhibits neighborhood's rich history". KRON4. 2015-07-17. Retrieved 2024-01-14.
  5. [5]
    Sunset: The Magazine of the Pacific and of All the Far West. Vol. 18. Southern Pacific Company. 1907. p. 502.
  6. [6]
    "San Francisco Landmark #176: Cadillac Hotel". noehill.com. Retrieved 2024-01-14.
  7. [7]
    Accardi, Catherine (2012). San Francisco Landmarks. Arcadia Publishing. p. 34. ISBN 978-0-7385-9580-1.
  8. [8]
    "National Register of Historic Places Inventory/Nomination: Uptown Tenderloin Historic District". National Park Service. Retrieved January 14, 2024. With accompanying pictures
  9. [9]
    "Cadillac Hotel". Historical Marker Database (HMDB). Retrieved 2024-01-15.
  10. [10]
    Michelson, Alan. "Cadillac Hotel, Tenderloin, San Francisco, CA". Pacific Coast Architecture Database (PCAD). Retrieved 2024-01-15.
  11. [11]
    Older Americans in the Nation's Neighborhoods: Hearing Before the Special Committee on Aging, United States Senate, Ninety-fifth Congress, Second Session ... United States Congress Senate Special Committee on Aging. U.S. Government Printing Office. 1979. pp. 161–166.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
  12. [12]
    Shaw, Randy. "The Cadillac Hotel Shaped History of San Francisco". FoundSF. Retrieved 2024-01-15.
  13. [13]
    Sjostedt, David (2023-02-09). "SF's Worst Apartment Elevator Held Together by Zip Tie". The San Francisco Standard. Retrieved 2024-01-15.
  14. [14]
    "Elevator issues causing problems for those living in San Francisco's residential hotels". CBS San Francisco. 2023-09-21. Retrieved 2024-01-15.
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