Inside 25 Historic San Francisco Hotels

The hotel where a president died in office, the one that reopened a year to the day after the 1906 quake, a Fisherman’s Wharf cannery warehouse, and the Sutter Street hotel Hitchcock filmed in Vertigo.

San Francisco rebuilt its grand hotels after the 1906 earthquake and fire, and turned a cannery warehouse, a YMCA, and an Army officers’ hall into hotels besides. This list has the Nob Hill hotel where President Harding died in office, the Fairmont that reopened a year to the day after the quake, the Fisherman’s Wharf warehouse that is now the Argonaut, and the Sutter Street hotel Hitchcock filmed in Vertigo.

The list is grouped by character, not ranked. Most of the hotels link to their own site, where the rate is current and you book direct; a few are listed without a link.

The grand old names

The Palace Hotel · Market Street

The first Palace Hotel opened in 1875, built by the financier William Ralston and Senator William Sharon as one of the largest luxury hotels in the world. The 1875 building was gutted by fire after the April 1906 earthquake, and the present Palace reopened on the same site in 1909. President Warren G. Harding died in a room here on August 2, 1923, while still in office. The tenor Enrico Caruso was a guest the night of the 1906 quake and, by the oft-repeated account, fled the city vowing never to return.

Fairmont San Francisco · Nob Hill

The Fairmont was named for the silver baron James ‘Bonanza Jim’ Fair, and was nearly finished when the 1906 earthquake and fire gutted its interior. It reopened on April 18, 1907, a year to the day after the quake, with interiors restored by the architect Julia Morgan. In 1945, delegates drafting the United Nations Charter in the city met at the Fairmont. Its basement Tonga Room, a tiki bar built around a former indoor pool with simulated rainstorms, opened in 1945.

InterContinental Mark Hopkins · Nob Hill

The Mark Hopkins stands on the Nob Hill site of the railroad magnate Mark Hopkins’s Victorian mansion, which burned in the 1906 fire. It opened in 1926, a 19-story hotel by the firm Weeks and Day. The glass-walled Top of the Mark lounge opened on the top floor in 1939. During the Second World War, Pacific-bound servicemen drank a farewell at the Top of the Mark, and the corner where women watched the troopships leave became known as Weepers’ Corner.

Westin St. Francis · Union Square

The St. Francis opened on Union Square in 1904, financed by the Crocker family estate. Its masonry came through the 1906 earthquake, but the interior burned in the fire that followed, and the hotel was rebuilt and enlarged. From the 1930s it washed its coins so they would not soil guests’ white gloves, and kept that up for decades. In 1921 the silent-film comedian Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle hosted the party here that led to the death of the actress Virginia Rappe and his manslaughter trials.

Beacon Grand · Union Square

The Beacon Grand opened in 1928 as the Sir Francis Drake, an early high-rise that helped reshape the Union Square skyline. It was renamed Beacon Grand in 2022 after a renovation, retiring the Sir Francis Drake name it had carried for more than ninety years. Beefeater-costumed doormen have stood at the entrance since its early years, and its 21st-floor Starlight Room has been a rooftop lounge since 1939.

Nob Hill

The Huntington Hotel · Nob Hill

The Huntington opened in 1924 as the Huntington Apartments, a luxury residential block, before it became a hotel. It sits at the top of Nob Hill beside Huntington Park, named for the railroad magnate Collis P. Huntington. Closed during the pandemic and lost to default, it was bought by Highgate and Flynn Properties and reopened in 2024. Its Big 4 restaurant is named for the Central Pacific Railroad’s ‘Big Four’ barons.

Stanford Court · Nob Hill

The Stanford Court is on the Nob Hill site of the railroad magnate Leland Stanford’s 1870s mansion, destroyed in the 1906 fire. An apartment building went up on the site in 1912 and was later turned into the Stanford Court Hotel, which opened in 1972. A stained-glass dome covers the carriage-entrance courtyard.

Taj Campton Place · Union Square

Taj Campton Place is in a 1907 building near Union Square that ran for decades as the Drake-Wiltshire Hotel. It reopened as Campton Place in 1983 and became known for a restaurant that helped define California cuisine. India’s Taj Hotels took it over in 2007 and renamed it Taj Campton Place.

Hotel Vertigo · Lower Nob Hill

Hotel Vertigo is in the former Empire Hotel at 940 Sutter Street, which Alfred Hitchcock filmed as Judy Barton’s residence in the 1958 movie Vertigo. Later the York Hotel, it was redesigned and rebranded as Hotel Vertigo around 2008, in tribute to the film.

White Swan Inn · Lower Nob Hill

The White Swan Inn is in an Edwardian building on Bush Street at the foot of Nob Hill, done up as an English country house with a library and fireplaces. It is one of the few traditional bed-and-breakfast inns still running in downtown San Francisco.

Union Square and downtown

The Clift Royal Sonesta · Union Square

The Clift opened in 1915, built by the attorney Frederick Clift in the Theater District just off Union Square. Its Redwood Room bar, paneled in wood said to come from a single old-growth redwood, opened in 1933 at the end of Prohibition. Philippe Starck reimagined the interiors during Ian Schrager’s ownership in the early 2000s.

Hotel Zeppelin · Union Square

Hotel Zeppelin is at 545 Post Street, which ran for years as the Prescott Hotel. It reopened as Hotel Zeppelin in 2016, with interiors themed on San Francisco’s 1960s counterculture and rock-and-roll history.

Hotel Union Square · Union Square

Hotel Union Square was built in 1913 and expanded for visitors to the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition. The detective novelist Dashiell Hammett lived and wrote in the Union Square area in the 1920s, and the hotel keeps a Dashiell Hammett Suite. Original 1913 details, including exposed-brick walls and lobby murals, survive in the building.

Hotel Whitcomb · Civic Center

The Whitcomb building on Market Street served as San Francisco’s temporary City Hall from about 1912 to 1915, while the new City Hall was rebuilt after the 1906 earthquake. The mayor’s office and city government ran from the building in those years, before it opened fully as a hotel. Its lobby keeps marble columns, mosaic floors, and stained glass from the early period.

Pickwick Hotel · SoMa

The Pickwick opened in 1926 at Fifth and Mission, built by the Pickwick Stages intercity bus company and named for Dickens’s The Pickwick Papers. The same Pickwick enterprise went on to start Pickwick Airways in the late 1920s.

Used to be something else

Omni San Francisco Hotel · Financial District

The Omni is in the Financial Center Building at 500 California Street, finished in 1926. The building first held offices and a bank’s banking hall, not guest rooms. It was converted and opened as the Omni San Francisco in 2002.

Argonaut Hotel · Fisherman’s Wharf

The Argonaut is in the Haslett Warehouse, a brick-and-timber cannery warehouse built between 1907 and 1909 at Fisherman’s Wharf. The warehouse is on the National Register of Historic Places and sits within the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park. It opened as a hotel in 2003, sharing its block with the maritime park’s visitor center.

Harbor Court Hotel · Embarcadero

The Harbor Court is in a former YMCA building on the Embarcadero waterfront. From its days as the Y it kept a swimming pool, which guests can still use. Taking down the Embarcadero Freeway after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake opened up the hotel’s bay views.

Inn at the Presidio · The Presidio

The Inn at the Presidio is in Pershing Hall, built in 1903 as bachelor officers’ quarters at the Presidio army post. After the Army left, the Presidio Trust restored the building and opened it as an inn in 2012. It sits within the Presidio of San Francisco, a former military base that is now part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.

Hotel Kabuki · Japantown

Hotel Kabuki opened in 1968 as the Miyako Hotel, part of the Japan Center built during Japantown’s postwar redevelopment. It was later renamed Hotel Kabuki and keeps Japanese-influenced design throughout.

Small houses with character

Queen Anne Hotel · Lower Pacific Heights

The Queen Anne building was finished in 1890 and first held Miss Mary Lake’s School for Girls. It later served as a club and a residence before becoming a hotel, and is tied in local accounts to the silver senator James G. Fair. Guests and staff report that the spirit of Miss Mary Lake lingers in room 410.

Hotel Majestic · Lower Pacific Heights

The Majestic opened in 1902 and is often called one of San Francisco’s oldest continuously running hotels. It was built as a private residence and turned into a hotel soon after. The building came through the 1906 earthquake and fire.

Chateau Tivoli · Alamo Square

Chateau Tivoli is a mansion at 1057 Steiner Street, built around 1892, one of the painted-lady Victorians near Alamo Square. Run as a bed-and-breakfast, its rooms are named for figures the inn links to the house, among them Enrico Caruso and Isadora Duncan. It was repainted in its multicolored period scheme in the 1980s.

Hotel Boheme · North Beach

The Boheme is on Columbus Avenue in North Beach, the heart of 1950s Beat San Francisco, near City Lights Books. It is decorated in homage to the Beat poets, and Allen Ginsberg is said to have stayed in the building. It opened as a small boutique hotel in 1995.

The Mosser · SoMa

The Mosser is in a 1913 building on Fourth Street, built as a Victorian-era hotel for downtown visitors. It pairs its early-1900s architecture with later remodeling, and runs now as a budget boutique hotel.

Frequently Asked Questions

Are these hotels ranked?
No. The groups sort them by character, and the order within each group carries no meaning.

What made a hotel interesting enough for this list?
A story. Every entry was a Nob Hill grand, a Union Square landmark, a warehouse, a bank, or a Victorian with a past. Comfort alone did not qualify a hotel.

Why are there no prices?
Rates change daily and a priced list goes stale in a month. Where a hotel runs its own site, its name links there, so you see the current rate and book direct.

Which hotel puts me closest to the day trips on this site?
Most day trips from San Francisco leave by road, across the Golden Gate to Muir Woods and the wine country, or down the coast, and by ferry from the Embarcadero. The Union Square and downtown hotels sit most central.

Do the small hotels book out faster than the grand ones?
Usually. The small inns — the Queen Anne, Chateau Tivoli, Hotel Boheme — hold few rooms and fill first. Book those well ahead.