International Hotel (San Francisco)

The International Hotel, often referred to as the I-Hotel, was built in 1907 after the devastating 1906 earthquake and was a low-cost residential hotel located at the corner of Kearny and Jackson Streets in the Manilatown section of San Francisco. 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. 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.

History

"Urban Renewal" planning

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.