Tilden San Francisco Book

Since 1928

Our history

An Art Deco building in the heart of Union Square that has been a grand hotel, a residential hotel, and now a boutique one again.

Art Deco heritage, and a Union Square landmark

The Tilden occupies a structure that shows off early twentieth-century architectural elegance, and has stayed part of the city's fabric through every change around it. Between O'Farrell Street and Ellis Street.

  1. Mark Twain, for whom the hotel was originally named

    1928

    The Hotel Mark Twain opens

    The building opens on Taylor Street as the Hotel Mark Twain, named for the American author. It is renamed almost immediately — the first of several changes of identity over the following century.

  2. Douglas Tilden, the sculptor after whom the hotel is named

    1860–1935

    The sculptor the hotel is named for

    Douglas Tilden, born in Chico in 1860, becomes one of California's most significant sculptors. A deaf Chicano artist, he creates the Admission Day Monument in 1897 and the Mechanics Monument on Market Street in 1901 — both still standing. He dies in Berkeley in 1935.

  3. The jazz singer Billie Holiday

    1940s

    Billie Holiday's arrest

    During its years as the Hotel Mark Twain, the jazz singer Billie Holiday is reportedly arrested on the premises — one of the more colourful episodes in the building's past, and one that resurfaced in the press when the hotel reopened.

  4. The Tenderloin district of San Francisco

    Mid-century

    A Tenderloin residential hotel

    Like much of the neighbourhood, the building spends decades as a single-room-occupancy hotel — housing, rather than hospitality, for a part of the city that needed it.

  5. The Tilden Hotel after its 2016 redesign

    2016

    Redesigned by Studio Tack

    Brooklyn's Studio Tack leads a full redesign, turning the SRO into a boutique hotel. The renovation deliberately keeps the steam heating, the exposed piping and the decorative staircases, and sets light-filled communal rooms against them. The hotel takes the Tilden name.

  6. San Francisco during the pandemic

    2020

    Temporary closure

    Along with most of San Francisco's hospitality industry, the Tilden closes temporarily during the pandemic.

  7. A guest room at the Tilden Hotel after the recent renovation

    2025

    A new chapter

    The hotel reopens after a second thorough renovation, with 119 rooms and suites, a restaurant, a patisserie and a rooftop penthouse — and a renewed focus on straightforward, genuine hospitality.

Experience the new Tilden

The building has been many things. Right now it is a hotel again, two blocks from Union Square, and open.

See the rooms