Tales from the Hotel Jefferson

The owners may have been ambitious when they opened “The Jefferson” apartments on the empty southeast corner of Turk and Gough Streets at the end of 1904.

The four-story building had steam heat, gas and electricity, wall beds (which Friends of Woody might remember I wrote a bit about in Grab Bag #44), private baths, an elevator, and even a—as in one—telephone.

Rounded corner bays were topped with handsome bell-shaped roofs. The location provided pleasant views to the green lawns and trees of Jefferson Square park across the street.

There were humbler and more industrial structures to the south in Hayes Valley, including some early automobile manufacturers. The Pioneer Automobile Company was over on Golden Gate Avenue and the “Mobile Carriage Company” built its capacious garage right next door on Gough Street.

All in all, a mixed neighborhood, so somewhat a risky enterprise. Trying to attract tenants a year after starting business, the Jefferson continued to advertise itself as “just opened.”

In the spring of 1906, the financial outlook for the Jefferson Apartments went from middling to dire to booming within a matter of days.

The big earthquake shook the city on the morning of April 18th. The Jefferson remained standing after the shock. Neighbors didn’t do as well:

Large fires headed west from downtown and, more threatening, the “Ham and Eggs fire” erupted in Hayes Valley just five blocks away.

The flames were stopped just short of Golden Gate Avenue on the south, one block from The Jefferson. Refugees camped in the park across the street.

Hotels to the east, including the city’s most posh—the St. Francis, the Palace, the Grand—were incinerated or gutted. Rooms of any type were at a premium.

The Hotel Colonial and Hotel Stewart, kitty-corner from each other at Pine and Jones Streets, also burned in the flames. Their owners regrouped by joining forces as the Stewart-Barker Company and took over the Jefferson Apartments.

By adding the Sentinel apartment building next door on Turk Street, they rechristened the complex as the 250-room “Hotel Jefferson.”

The refugees camping across the street were not the target clientele. High-end guests temporarily displaced and visiting dignitaries with business in the rebuilding city were. 

Attorneys, capitalists, rear-admirals, railroad engineers from Japan, college presidents, and Hawaiian prince Jonah Kūhiō Kalanianaʻole, the territorial delegate of Hawaii to the U.S. Congress, all stayed at the Jefferson. The famous actress Nance O’Neil took room #349 while she was in town.

The Jefferson’s doorman, nicknamed the “kid-faced kid,” welcomed them. Bootblack Tony Silva polished their shoes. The ground-floor café hosted their meals, club meetings, and card games.

In 1913, the rates at the Jefferson were $2 per day on the American plan (3 meals a day included) and .75c per day European plan—still fairly pricey for a mid-sized hotel. They advertised simply: “You will like the Jefferson; everybody does.”

By September 1913, as the city and its hotel district recovered and rebuilt, the Hotel Jefferson returned to its roots.

The middle class had begun leaving the area for newer residential tracts constructed to the west and the hundreds of modern apartment units springing up in Nob and Russian Hills.

The Jefferson owners decided to settle for the primary security of modest monthly renters over the up-and-down hotel business.

In 1917, apartments rented from between $20–$45 a month (about $500 to $1,100 in 2025 dollars) and a single room for $12. These rates were pretty middle of the road for someone looking for furnished apartments at the time.

Jefferson Life

In previous eras, being mentioned in the newspaper meant your address was shared with millions. Not great for privacy, but fun for us history folks.

Browsing items by the Hotel Jefferson’s address—848 Gough Street—provides the drama of the every-day: births, marriages, burglaries, accidents, romances, suicides, entrepreneurial schemes.

“Young widow with baby, 16 mos. Desires light housework for well-to-do bachelor or widower. Apply 848 Gough, near Turk, apt. 105, 1 to 5 P. M.; object matrimony.” — San Francisco Chronicle classified ad, July 30, 1914

“Charles Loesch, 53 years old, vice-president and manager of the California Baking Company, Eddy and Fillmore streets, committed suicide yesterday by shooting himself in the head at the Hotel Jefferson, 848 Gough street.” — San Francisco Chronicle, August 23, 1918

From apartment #210, Mrs. Lamme hawked New Mexico oil leases (“fortunes in reach of all”) in 1920. In 1926, the resident of apartment #421 advertised her occult powers: “Why worry and be in doubt? Let Madam Rena figure it out.”

Writer and social worker Mrs. Mildred Claunch, interviewed at her apartment in 1925, told the San Francisco Bulletin that of all her jobs, she liked motherhood the best. “It’s the greatest profession in the world.”

Mrs. Rose Spear preferred a different profession. In December 1925, the police came to her place at the Jefferson apartments and arrested her as the alleged head of a gang of Eastern pickpockets.

And there was scarier and more tragic stuff:

“Miss Mary Searls, 22, awakened with a start in her apartment at 848 Gough street shortly after 3:30 o’clock yesterday morning to find a man grasping her firmly by the throat. She attempted to scream, but the man choked her into silence. She fought savagely, scratching, biting and kicking, and finally freed herself, her assailant slipping out of a window to the fire escape.” — San Francisco Chronicle, September 8, 1926.

In June 1932, Thomas Whelan, gambler and resident of 848 Gough, was arrested for holding up a market, then running down and killing a pedestrian while trying to escape in his car.

Herbert Skaggs died from a fractured skull in a fracas after he 86’d two men from his tavern at 621 Gough Street in 1945. His wife had delivered a son just the year before.

Numerous newspaper notices of marriage-license applications by residents of the Jefferson appear over the years, as well as lots of birth announcements. In 1929, two couples, Mr. and Mrs. John Barry and Mr. and Mrs. Oliver Geyer, both had girls. Perhaps they baby-sat for each other?

By September 1939, a three-room corner apartment, with refrigerator, set you back $42.50 a month, about $950 in 2025 dollars. In mid 1943, with workers descending on San Francisco for the war effort, the price went up to $50.

That year, resident Ernest Skaggs advertised in the paper looking to buy an airplane, at least 65 horsepower. Unknown if he found one or where he might have parked it.

Paperboy Sam Long, 14 years old, had a crazy story to tell when he came home from his newsboy job on January 29, 1940. A despondent man tossed him $45 in bills from the roof of a hotel at 587 Eddy Street before leaping to his death.

The next year, Sam was caught riding a fender of a streetcar and a cop knocked his two front teeth knocked out. (The police officer was suspended.)

In August 1952, Chief Boatswain’s Mate Donald Hertz heroically saved a group of sailors when the USS Sarsi went down in the Sea of Japan after hitting an enemy mine in 1952. His wife Betty with their 21-month-old daughter, Linda Sue, heard the news from reporters in their apartment at 848 Gough Street.

The End

While it was just missed by the flames of the 1906 fire, the Hotel Jefferson seemed doomed to meet an incendiary fate. Big fires damaged the building in 1909 and 1934. Multiple small ones were extinguished in apartments over the years.

Early Saturday morning, May 21, 1938, a mysterious basement fire sent the 120 residents fleeing into the street in their night wear. It was a frightening and dramatic dawn.

“In many instances firemen turned water on the clothes of the persons being carried down ladders to keep them from bursting into flames under the terrific heat.”

People in a neighboring building on Turk Street set a ladder across a light well to help some of the Jeffersonians scramble across and escape the flames. Somehow, the building survived again.

The Age of the Automobile did what multiple fires could not.

The Hotel Jefferson was demolished in January 1957 for an on-ramp onto the Central Freeway, which opened two years later.

With all its ups and downs, the Jefferson apartment building survived 52 years. Damaged by the 1989 earthquake, the Central Freeway’s Gough Street ramp lasted just 33.

Beertown is Next Week

Don’t forget to join me online for the Beertown talk next Thursday, January 30 at 6:30 p.m. Friends of Woody can attend free (if you use the promo code below!)

Woody Beer and Coffee Fund

Great thanks to Professora Em and Mike P., both official Friends of Woody, for contributing to the sociability fund that lets me buy drinks and have a chat with...you? Let me know when you are free and let us do-it-to-it, as they say.

Sources

“Hotel Jefferson Grows to Meet Public Demand,” San Francisco Bulletin, August 14, 1906, pg. 5. 

“Matron Held in Theft Net,” San Francisco Examiner, December 16, 1925, pg. 6.

“Man Attacks Girl Asleep,” San Francisco Chronicle, September 8, 1926, pg. 3.

“Probe Fails to Reveal Cause of Blaze in S. F. Hotel,” San Francisco Chronicle, May 22, 1938, pg. 12.

“Dullea Wants Officer Fired,” San Francisco Chronicle, March 23, 1941, pg. 3.

“Freeway Breaks In,” San Francisco Chronicle, January 21, 1957, pg. 16.