Lower Nob Hill Apartment Hotel District

Covering about five blocks of three parallel east-west streets on the south slope of Nob Hill, this San Francisco district is made up almost entirely of 3- to 7-story apartment buildings and residential hotels that fill their front lot lines. Most went up between 1906 and 1925, and their facades follow a common Sullivanesque pattern of flat roofs, boldly projecting galvanized iron cornices and a column-like arrangement of wall and windows. Ornament varies from building to building, drawing on Classical, Renaissance, Mission/Spanish Revival and Art Nouveau motifs, with a few Art Deco buildings from the 1930s. About 46 percent of buildings are stucco and 42 percent brick. Roughly half have shops at street level, mostly serving residents. The district is listed because it preserves a cohesive, largely intact neighborhood of walk-to-work apartment housing from the early twentieth century, with 297 contributing buildings, distinct from the larger, more commercial Tenderloin to the south.