{"nrhp_refnum":"86000148","name":"YMCA Hotel","other_names":["Whitehall Apartments"],"category":"building","location":{"address":"351 Turk St.","address_restricted":false,"city":"San Francisco","county":"San Francisco","state":"CA","lat":37.783419270000024,"lon":-122.41464651499996,"geom_source":"nps_gis"},"listed_date":"1986-02-06","is_nhl":false,"nhl_designated_date":null,"areas_of_significance":["Architecture","Social History"],"significance_levels":["local"],"summary":{"what_it_is":"A twelve-story and penthouse steel-frame reinforced concrete residential hotel at 351 Turk Street in San Francisco's Tenderloin district, built in 1928 for the San Francisco Y.M.C.A. and designed by Frederick Herman Meyer.","why_significant":"The nomination argues it is one of San Francisco's last major buildings in the Chicago style of vertical blocks with historicist ornament, noted for its Romanesque and Byzantine Revival terra cotta. It was probably the last major pre-1945 work of architect Frederick H. Meyer. It also completed the Y.M.C.A.'s planned set of social service buildings, and no other California Y.M.C.A. built a structure exclusively as a hotel.","narrative":"Rising twelve stories above Turk Street in San Francisco's Tenderloin, this 1928 hotel was built by the Y.M.C.A. to give young men a clean, safe and inexpensive place to stay. Architect Frederick H. Meyer designed the exterior from a functional plan supplied by the organization's International Building Bureau. A two-story base of buff brick and terra cotta, with Romanesque and Byzantine ornament, supports a plain brick shaft under a galvanized iron cornice. Inside, the ground-floor lecture room keeps its stenciled beams and octagonal columns. The hotel is regarded as one of the last big San Francisco buildings in the Chicago style and probably the final major pre-1945 work of Meyer. It also completed the Y.M.C.A.'s building program set out in 1916. The Great Depression soon changed its use, and women were admitted from 1935. The entry was replaced in 1967, but most of the building is intact, and a 1985 conversion to low-income housing was planned.","period_of_significance":"1900- (specific date 1928)","architect_builder":"Frederick Herman Meyer","architectural_style":"Chicago style with Romanesque Revival and Byzantine Revival detailing","criteria":["A","C"],"status_note":"Occupied and in good condition at the time of nomination; renovation was beginning to convert the hotel to low-income housing, with the original entry design to be approximately restored.","vacant_flag":false,"machine_generated":true,"model":"claude-sonnet-5-5","prompt_version":"v1.0-2026-10-29","generated_at":"2026-10-29 02:54:28.32061-05","source_pdf":"https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/lz/electronic-records/rg-079/NPS_CA/86000148.pdf"},"photo":{"url_800":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/86000148/eac167d880-800.webp","url_1600":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/86000148/eac167d880-1600.webp","licence":"CC BY-SA 4.0","author":"Sanfranman59","credit_html":"<a href=\"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:YMCA_Hotel_(San_Francisco).jpg\" rel=\"noopener\">Sanfranman59</a>, <a href=\"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0\" rel=\"license noopener\">CC BY-SA 4.0</a>, via Wikimedia Commons","source_page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:YMCA_Hotel_(San_Francisco).jpg"},"district":null,"sources":{"nps_snapshot_date":"2026-05-22","nara_catalog":"https://catalog.archives.gov/id/123861365","wikipedia":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YMCA_Hotel_(San_Francisco)","wikidata":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q38252236"},"indexable":true,"url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/california/san-francisco/ymca-hotel-86000148/"}