International Hotel (San Francisco)
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International Hotel
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The 2nd incarnation of the International Hotel
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| Location | San Francisco, California |
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| Coordinates | 37°47′46″N 122°24′17″W / 37.7961°N 122.4048°WCoordinates: 37°47′46″N 122°24′17″W / 37.7961°N 122.4048°W |
| Built | Original built 1907, current built 2005 |
| Architect | Unknown |
| Architectural style | Contemporary |
| NRHP Reference # | 77000333 |
| Added to NRHP | June 15, 1977 |
The International Hotel, often referred to locally as the I-Hotel and intended as a luxury destination for wealthy travelers, was originally built on Jackson Street in 1854, moved to its 848 Kearny Street location in 1873 and was rebuilt in 1907 after the great San Francisco earthquake and fire in 1906. By the 1920s, the International Hotel found itself squarely in the middle of a 10-block Filipino American enclave along Kearny Street known as Manilatown, the Manilatown section of San Francisco and became a low-cost residential hotel. During the 1920s and 1930s, thousands of seasonal Asian laborers came to reside at the hotel.
It was home to many Asian Americans, specifically a large Filipino American population. Around 1954, the I-Hotel also famously housed in its basement Enrico Banduccci's original "hungry i" nightclub. By the late 1970s, the I-Hotel was almost all that was left of Manilatown. The hotel was demolished in 1981, and after the site was purchased by the International Hotel Senior Housing Inc., it was rebuilt and opened in 2005. It now shares spaces with St. Mary's School and Manilatown.
The primarily Filipino population of immigrants living at the I-Hotel represented an area of Kearny Street in Chinatown known as San Francisco's Manilatown. Despite its full occupancy, during the urban renewal and redevelopment movement of the mid-1960s, the International Hotel was targeted for demolition. This "urban renewal" that was occurring in response to the ending of World War II had destroyed the heart of this section of San Francisco—The Fillmore District, west of downtown, hundreds of homes and thousands of residents were displaced due to the city's plans to expand the downtown business sector.
Along with the ten full blocks of low-cost housing, restaurants, barber shops, markets, clubs and other businesses that benefited the Filipino community of around 10,000 people being destroyed, the International Hotel was planned to be demolished next. In order for the city to demolish the building, they needed to evict all of the "old timers" that lived in the I-hotel. Due to the 50 dollars a month rent, many of the tenants were poor and the community that was based around this residence was all that they had. There were 196 tenants in the building that were ordered to leave in October of that same year.
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