This post was originally published in January 2021, with updates made in October 2025.
Hidden behind a large tree in quiet South Park is The Gran Oriente Filipino Hotel (104-106 South Park Street), a three-story-over-basement rooming house that tells the story of the longstanding Filipino presence in San Francisco and the South of Market.
Originally developed as an exclusive residential area with a private park in the years after the Gold Rush, South Park became an ethnic enclave in the years after the 1906 earthquake and fire—first to large numbers of Japanese immigrants, and later to Filipino immigrants.
Constructed in 1907, the three-story property at 104-106 South Park Street was home to the Hotel Maruichi and then Omiya Hotel by the 1920s, one of several prominent Japanese establishments that catered to disembarking Japanese steamship passengers at nearby Piers 30-32.
Filipino/a immigrants had also begun to settle in the South Park area alongside the Japanese at this time, establishing the South of Market as a longtime enclave alongside “Manilatown” along Kearny Street between Pine and Pacific streets—like the Japanese, Filipino/as were subjected to racial discrimination in the form of racial covenants, which forced them to live in proximity to existing Asian enclaves.
As the Japanese moved out of South Park, several properties were acquired by Filipino owners. Gran Oriente Filipino, a Masonic organization founded by Filipino Merchant Marines in the early 1920s, began renting 106 South Park Street in 1935. These sailors were part of the wave of Filipino immigration to the United States that started in 1920 and comprising largely of single men under the age of thirty from the Philippines. With few opportunities to marry and start families, Masonic and fraternal organizations became the community’s strongest source of support.
Originally, the 24-room SRO-style hotel served as a meeting place and boarding house for members who worked in San Francisco and for farm workers from the Central Valley who visited on weekends. The Gran Oriente allowed seasonal and transient workers to keep their rooms while working in the fields or at sea, store their belongings, and keep their money with hotel managers.
The fraternity provided not only low-cost housing to its members, but also education, social activities, and financial assistance. In Voices: A Filipino American Oral History, several anonymous Filipinos described the importance that the organization played in their lives:
I joined a fraternity, the Gran Oriente Filipino. We had social activities, met people, learned to adjust. Being a member of the fraternity, I improved myself. It was good, like learning about religion. Our fraternity bought properties in San Francisco, apartments for rent. Old members lived here and pay less. If any members pass away, their families are well assisted by the fraternity. We don’t just leave them without any help.”
It wasn’t until the passage of the Luce-Cellar Act in 1946 that Filipina/os who had arrived in the US prior to 1934 were allowed to naturalize and consequently to purchase property in California. This led the property to become one of the earliest Filipino-owned buildings in the South of Market area when the organization purchased it in 1948, and it remains as a space to live, socialize, and celebrate Filipino culture in the wake of ongoing local neighborhood gentrification—South Park was reborn during the dot-com era as a high-priced tech and venture capital enclave, still reflective in the makeup of the park today.
SFP78-007-413.
By the 1990s, the number of Gran Oriente members were dwindling as its population aged. In 2018, there were only five residents still living in the hotel, and the organization decided to sell the building, while ensuring that the building would continue to serve as much needed affordable housing. Working with Filipino/a community leaders such as SOMCAN, SOMA Pilipinas, and The Filipino Community Development Corporation, nonprofit housing developer Mission Housing purchased the building in 2018.
The building today still retains its historic function, with an interior common to early 20th century rooming houses: common rooms and a shared kitchen are located on the first story and small rooms with shared bathrooms are on the second and third stories.
After the Covid-19 pandemic, the stucco-clad building underwent a few facade alterations, including a new paint job and the removal of its painted trompe l’oeil pediment lintels and Corinthian columns and metal entrance gates—though it has retained the metal “Gran Oriente Filipino” lettering that adorned the building entrance when the lodge leased the property.
With the demise of Manilatown in the late 1970s and the closure of the dozens of Filipino residential hotels in San Francisco, the Gran Oriente Filipino Hotel continues to serve as a significant source of inspiration and cultural legacy for the Filipino/a community in South Park and beyond, and stands as a testament to the strong bonds of community the organization forged in the face of racism and discrimination. Since the mid-1930s, it has provided a critical source of affordable housing when Filipinos were excluded from white organizations and neighborhoods in San Francisco, and remains a source of 100% affordable rental housing today.
SOMA Pilipinas banners in South Park.
Sources
“The amazing saga of the Gran Oriente Filipino Hotel,” San Francisco Examiner, March 10, 2023.
Cordova, Joan May T., and Alexis S. Cordova, eds. Voices: A Filipino American Oral History. Stockton, CA: Filipino Oral History Project, 1984.
Gran Oriente Hotel National Register Landmark Nomination Report, United States Department of the Interior, October 2, 2019.
For our Heritage in the Neighborhoods: South of Market month, we are spotlighting the history and heritage of this “South of the Slot” neighborhood.
