1906 North Beach Boutique Hotel with the Painted Lady
2237 Mason Street, San Francisco, CA 94133
Age
All Ages
Cost
$$$
Boutique hotel rates vary seasonally; many rooms share European-style bathrooms, with one rooftop penthouse suite at higher pricing.
Access
Limited Access
Historic stairs to upper floors; no elevator
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1906 · Post-1906 earthquake reconstruction · A.P. Giannini · North Beach
The San Remo Hotel sits at 2237 Mason Street in San Francisco's North Beach, a few blocks above Fisherman's Wharf and the bay. The three-story Italianate building was constructed in 1906 by A.P. Giannini, the founder of the Bank of Italy, which later became Bank of America. Giannini built the hotel in the immediate aftermath of the April 1906 earthquake and fire, on the edge of a city that was still rebuilding from the rubble.
The hotel originally opened as the New California Hotel and served the workers who poured into San Francisco to rebuild it: sailors, fishermen, dockworkers, and chocolate-makers from the nearby Ghirardelli plant. The building was renamed the San Remo in 1922. It remained an inexpensive working hotel through much of the 20th century and has since been preserved as a small European-style boutique hotel, with most of its rooms sharing antique-tiled bathrooms in the hallway and a rooftop penthouse cottage available as a single suite.
The San Remo retains its original wooden staircases, pressed-tin ceilings, antique furniture, and stained-glass skylights. It is one of the oldest continuously operating hotels in San Francisco and a fixture of North Beach.
Sources
The Painted Lady is the most consistent figure in San Remo Hotel lore. According to retellings collected on San Francisco ghost-tour and paranormal sites, she was a retired North Beach madame who took up long-term residence in Room 33 and remained in the room when a brothel she had run nearby was closed. Hotel folklore places her death in 1978, alone in her locked room, with staff eventually entering through a window after the room had not been answered for some time.
Reports tied to her presence concentrate on the hallway outside Room 33: knocks on neighboring doors that yield no one when answered, footsteps in the corridor, the smell of perfume that does not match any guest, cold spots, and whispered voices heard inside the room itself. The Shadowlands entry that anchors this listing describes the experiences as calming rather than frightening, a description echoed in newer guest accounts.
A secondary strand of lore describes a child seen on the upper floors and reported to attempt entry to Room 42. A separate account, attributed in San Francisco ghost-tour material to a 1911 incident in the building's restaurant, describes a double homicide; the date is consistent with the hotel's earliest period of operation under the New California name, but no primary source is cited in the surveyed material. A man is also said to have died by suicide in Room 42, again without a documented primary source.
The San Remo's management does not actively promote a paranormal program but acknowledges the lore in interviews and regional press features. Guests who book Room 33 or Room 42 do so deliberately; the hotel does not steer reservations toward or away from them.
Notable Entities
Book a room at the 1906 North Beach hotel built by A.P. Giannini after the Great Earthquake, originally the New California Hotel and renamed the San Remo in 1922. Long-running folklore centers on Room 33, where a former resident known as the Painted Lady is reported to knock on neighboring doors and disappear before they open.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
San Francisco, CA
Architect Malcolm Cressy designed the four-story Edwardian as a private residence for the Schmitt family, completed 1902 and converted to hotel use 1904. The building survived the 1906 earthquake fire — which stopped two blocks east at Van Ness Avenue — and has operated continuously since. A 2002 proclamation by Senator Dianne Feinstein recognized it as the longest continuously-operating hotel in San Francisco.
San Francisco, CA
The original Palace opened in 1875 as one of the largest luxury hotels in the world. It survived the 1906 earthquake itself but was destroyed in the subsequent fire; the present building reopened on the same site on December 19, 1909. Operated today by Marriott as a Luxury Collection property, the Palace is best known historically as the place where President Warren G. Harding died in office on August 2, 1923.
San Francisco, CA
The St. Francis opened on Union Square in 1904, expanded with a new wing after the 1906 earthquake, and grew again with a 1972 tower addition. The flagship Westin property has been the site of two of San Francisco's most-discussed celebrity-death events: actress Virginia Rappe's collapse during Fatty Arbuckle's September 1921 Labor Day party in suite 1219-1221, and entertainer Al Jolson's fatal heart attack in the same suite during a card game on October 23, 1950.