| Hotel Whitcomb | |
|---|---|
 Hotel Whitcomb, 2009 | |
 | |
| General information | |
| Location | 1231 Market Street, San Francisco |
The Hotel Whitcomb is a San Francisco hotel that was built from 1911 to 1912. Located at 1231 Market Street, the Whitcomb opened in 1912 as San Francisco's temporary city hall and then reopened in 1917 as a 400-room hotel.
Plans for the building began in 1910 with the hiring of architects Wright & Rushforth and an agreement to lease the building for three years to the City of San Francisco as a temporary city hall (the old San Francisco City Hall was destroyed by fire spawned by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake). [1] [2] From the outset, the intention was to convert the building into a hotel once the new, permanent city hall was completed. The staggered uses required the architects to prepare "two sets of drawings, one superimposing the plans for the municipal building upon the plans for the hotel." [1]
The eight-story, steel-and-concrete building opened as the temporary city hall in March 1912. [3] The basement of the building served as a city jail during this time. [4]
With the completion of San Francisco City Hall in 1916, the building was converted into a 400-room hotel that opened in 1917. [5] The hotel was named for Adolphus Carter Whitcomb whose estate owned the property. [4]
When it opened, the hotel was proclaimed "the last word in modern hoteldom" with "the most modern fireproof construction", Pavenazetta marble, and a palm-filled, glass-enclosed observation deck and sun parlor on the roof. [6] The owners also imported 300,000 feet of Central American Jenezerro hardwood which was used to manufacture furniture, doors, and other interior work for the hotel. [7] The total cost of the project was placed at more than $2.25 million, including $700,000 for original construction of the temporary city hall, $400,000 for structural changes to convert the building into a hotel, and $150,000 for furnishings. [8]
In 1922, a new wing with an additional 102 guest rooms was added at a cost of $250,000 for the structure and another $100,000 for the furnishings and equipment. [1] The Whitcomb included a large ballroom from which concerts were broadcast during the property's heyday. [4]
During World War II, the Whitcomb provided office space for the Office for Emergency Management, the organization responsible for organizing and administering the internment of Japanese Americans. [4]
In 1963, the hotel was converted into residential rentals, with no transient occupancy. [9] During this period, the property was known simply as The Whitcomb. [10] [11] In subsequent years, the property became a hotel again and underwent multiple name changes, including "Biltmore Hotel", "San Franciscan Hotel", [12] "Ramada Plaza", [13] before the "Hotel Whitcomb" name was restored in 2007. [14] [15]
In 2020 the hotel became a shelter for homeless due to the pandemic. [16] [17] [18]
San Francisco City Hall is the seat of government for the City and County of San Francisco, California. Re-opened in 1915 in its open space area in the city's Civic Center, it is a Beaux-Arts monument to the City Beautiful movement that epitomized the high-minded American Renaissance of the 1880s to 1917. The structure's dome is taller than that of the United States Capitol by 42 feet (13 m). The present building replaced an earlier City Hall that was destroyed during the 1906 earthquake, which was two blocks from the present one.
The California College of the Arts (CCA) is a private art school in San Francisco, California. It was founded in Berkeley, California in 1907 and moved to a historic estate in Oakland, California in 1922. In 1996, it opened a second campus in San Francisco; in 2022, the Oakland campus was closed and merged into the San Francisco campus. CCA enrolls approximately 1,239 undergraduates and 380 graduate students.
Union Square is a 2.6-acre (1.1-hectare) public plaza bordered by Geary, Powell, Post, and Stockton Streets in downtown San Francisco, California. "Union Square" also refers to the central shopping, hotel, and theater district surrounding the plaza for several blocks. The area got its name because it was once used for Thomas Starr King rallies and support for the Union Army during the American Civil War, earning its designation as a California Historical Landmark. Despite its declining profile, Union Square in San Francisco is still a major retail hub for the city.
The San Francisco Public Library is the public library system of the city and county of San Francisco. The Main Library is located at Civic Center, at 100 Larkin Street. The library system has won several awards, such as Library Journal's Library of the Year award in 2018. The library is well-funded due to the city's dedicated Library Preservation Fund that was established by a 1994 ballot measure. The Preservation Fund was renewed twice, by ballot measures in 2007 and 2022.
Single-room occupancy (SRO) is a type of low-cost housing typically aimed at residents with low or minimal incomes, or single adults who like a minimalist lifestyle, who rent small, furnished single rooms with a bed, chair, and sometimes a small desk. SRO units are rented out as permanent residence and/or primary residence to individuals, within a multi-tenant building where tenants share a kitchen, toilets or bathrooms. SRO units range from 7 to 13 square metres. In some instances, contemporary units may have a small refrigerator, microwave, or sink.
Renaissance Hotels was founded as Ramada Renaissance in 1981, as an upscale brand of Ramada Inns. Hong Kong-based New World Development (NWD) acquired Ramada in 1989 and re-launched Renaissance Hotels as a separate brand. The brand was acquired by Marriott International in 1997. As of January 31, 2023, it has over 170 hotels worldwide.
16th Street station is a former Southern Pacific Railroad station in the Prescott neighborhood of Oakland, California, United States. The Beaux-Arts building was designed by architect Jarvis Hunt, a preeminent railroad station architect, and opened in 1912. The station has not been served by trains since 1994.
The Tenderloin is a neighborhood in downtown San Francisco, in the flatlands on the southern slope of Nob Hill, situated between the Union Square shopping district to the northeast and the Civic Center office district to the southwest. Encompassing about 50 square blocks, it is historically bounded on the north by Geary Street, on the east by Mason Street, on the south by Market Street and on the west by Van Ness Avenue. The northern boundary with Lower Nob Hill has historically been set at Geary Boulevard.
Herald Towers, formerly the Hotel McAlpin, is a residential condominium building on Herald Square, along Broadway between 33rd and 34th Streets, in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. Constructed from 1910 to 1912 by the Greeley Square Hotel Company, it operated as a short-term hotel until 1976. The building was designed by Frank Mills Andrews in the Italian Renaissance style and was the largest hotel in the world at the time of its completion, with 1,500 guestrooms. The hotel was expanded in 1917, when Warren and Wetmore designed an annex with 200 rooms.
The San Francisco Examiner is a newspaper distributed in and around San Francisco, California, and has been published since 1863.
The following is a timeline of the history of the city of San Francisco, California, United States.
The San Francisco Bay Area comprises nine northern California counties and contains five of the ten most expensive counties in the United States. Strong economic growth has created hundreds of thousands of new jobs, but coupled with severe restrictions on building new housing units, it has resulted in a statewide housing shortage which has driven rents to extremely high levels. The Sacramento Bee notes that large cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles both attribute their recent increases in homeless people to the housing shortage, with the result that homelessness in California overall has increased by 15% from 2015 to 2017. In September 2019, the Council of Economic Advisers released a report in which they stated that deregulation of the housing markets would reduce homelessness in some of the most constrained markets by estimates of 54% in San Francisco, 40 percent in Los Angeles, and 38 percent in San Diego, because rents would fall by 55 percent, 41 percent, and 39 percent respectively. In San Francisco, a minimum wage worker would have to work approximately 4.7 full-time jobs to be able to spend less than 30% of their income on renting a two-bedroom apartment.
Dean E. Preston is an American attorney and member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. In November 2019, Preston won a special election to finish Mayor London Breed's term on the Board of Supervisors. He was re-elected in the November 2020 election.
Historic Hotels of America is a program of the National Trust for Historic Preservation that was founded in 1989 with 32 charter members; the program accepts nominations and identifies hotels in the United States that have maintained their authenticity, sense of place, and architectural integrity.
The Omni San Francisco Hotel, formerly the Financial Center Building, located at the corner of Montgomery and California Streets San Francisco Financial District, dates from 1927, when it was built as a bank.
Eugenia Argiewicz, later Eugenia Argiewicz Bem, was a Polish violinist based in San Francisco, California for much of her career.
The Hilton San Francisco Financial District is a skyscraper hotel located east across Kearny Street from Portsmouth Square on the border between the Financial District and Chinatown neighborhoods of San Francisco, California. It opened in 1971 on the site formerly occupied by the San Francisco Hall of Justice, which had served as the headquarters of the San Francisco Police Department until 1961. The Chinese Culture Center leases approximately 20,000 sq ft (1,900 m2) within the building for rotating exhibitions at a nominal cost due to lobbying from the local Chinese-American community.
Parc 55 San Francisco - a Hilton Hotel is a 350 ft (107 m) skyscraper hotel located in Tenderloin, San Francisco, California.
John Fitz Madden was a career officer in the United States Army. A veteran of the U.S. response to the Garza Revolution, Spanish–American War, United States Military Government in Cuba, Philippine–American War, Pancho Villa Expedition, and World War I, he attained the rank of brigadier general and was a recipient of the French Legion of Honor (Officer) for his First World War service. Madden served in both high level staff positions, including chief quartermaster of the Pancho Villa Expedition, and important commands, including the 26th Infantry Regiment and the Hawaiian Division's 21st Infantry Brigade.
Daniel W. Hand was a career officer in the United States Army. A veteran of the Spanish–American War, Philippine–American War, Pancho Villa Expedition, and World War I, Hand attained the rank of brigadier general and was a recipient of the Army Distinguished Service Medal and Silver Star. He was best known for his command of Field Artillery units including the Department of Firing at the United States Army Field Artillery School and several Field Artillery regiments.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)