Hotaling Building

You are standing before the Hotaling Building, a structure that occupies a legendary place in San Francisco folklore. Built in eighteen sixty-six, this Italianate warehouse served as the headquarters for the A. P. Hotaling and Company liquor business. When the catastrophic nineteen oh six earthquake and fire devastated the city, this building famously remained standing while nearly everything around it turned to ash. Its survival sparked a famous bit of local wit, which asked why God would burn the churches down but spare a building filled with whiskey. That verse remains a permanent fixture of the city's irreverent identity to this day.