Hotaling Building

Hotaling Building
Hotaling Building in 2008.
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General information
Type	Commercial building
Location	451 Jackson Street San Francisco, California
Coordinates	37°47′47″N122°24′10″W / 37.7964°N 122.4028°W / 37.7964; -122.4028
San Francisco Designated Landmark
Designated	1969 [1]
Reference no.	12

The Hotaling Building is a historic building in San Francisco, California. It is located at 451 Jackson Street in Jackson Square. It is a San Francisco Designated Landmark.

History

It was built in 1866 by Anson Parsons Hotaling to originally be a hotel. However, Hotaling later moved to the whiskey business. It housed the Hotaling & Co. which imported whiskey from Kentucky to create its own branded bourbon blends (Cutter and Old Kirk) for local distribution. ^[2]

It was also one of the few surviving buildings after the 1906 Earthquake and Fire, thanks to a mile long fire hose that stretched through Fisherman's Wharf and Telegraph Hill. As the California Powder Works was blowing up buildings to create fire breaks, the employees of Hotaling & Co. rallied to move between 3,000 and 5,000 barrels from the Hotaling Building to a safer area, an empty lot where the new Customhouse was under construction. It remained one of the only alcohol stocks not destroyed by the authorities after the disaster. ^[2]

Because of the saving of the building, Charles K. Field ^[3] once stated famously, "If, as they say, God spanked the town for being over-frisky, why did He burn His churches down and spare Hotaling's whiskey?" Hotaling became one of the rare distributors of liquor in San Francisco still standing after the earthquake. ^[4]

Hotaling & Co. left the building in 1943. The company remained an active player of the local alcohol industry through Anchor Brewing Company which was sold to Sapporo in 2017. ^[2]

The building was revived in 1952 when Dorothy Kneedler Lawenda and Harry Lawenda of Kneedler-Fauchere purchased it and made it a center for their wholesale interior decorative design elements firm. The name Jackson Square was adopted, many buildings were renovated and the street became the interior design center for San Francisco for decades.

Description

The façade is Italianate with cast iron and cast iron shutters, a fire-resistant type of construction. ^[5]

Hotaling Place (formerly Jones Alley) is the street adjacent to the building that runs along the old city shoreline. ^{[4] [2]}

See also

• List of San Francisco Designated Landmarks

References

1. "City of San Francisco Designated Landmarks". City of San Francisco. Archived from the original on March 25, 2014. Retrieved October 21, 2012.
2. Young, Kerri (June 13, 2025). "Fun Friday: Hotaling's Whisky". San Francisco Heritage. Retrieved November 22, 2025.
3. Dion R. Holm (June 1962), "In re San Francisco (6 August 1962): Confessions of a Daring Native Son", American Bar Association Journal, 48: 558, One of our earliest Stanford graduates, Charles K. Field by name, a cynical son of Vermont ancestors, descending from his Olympus of rhetoric, evolved the following...
4. Chamings, Andrew. "The history of San Francisco's oldest alley". SFGATE. Archived from the original on January 30, 2024. Retrieved November 22, 2025.
5. "San Francisco Landmark #12: Hotaling Building". noehill.com. Retrieved November 22, 2025.