The Uptown Tenderloin is significant in the area of Social History for its association with the development of hotel and apartment life in San Francisco during a critical period of change. As a distinctive residential area it is also associated with commercial activity, entertainment, and vice. In addition it is significant in the area of Architecture for its distinctive mix of building types that served a new urban population of office and retail workers. Predominantly hotels and apartments, the district also includes non-residential building types associated with life in the neighborhood. The district is significant at the local level for the period 1906-1957.

The area described in this nomination as the Uptown Tenderloin district has never been clearly named and its boundaries have never been clearly defined. Depending on the various ways that the area has been characterized, its boundaries have been different. Over time, the area grew, moved to the west a few blocks, and later shrank at its east end. Its earliest incarnation as St. Anne’s Valley was largely east of what is called the Tenderloin today. During the years from the 1870s to 1906 when it was primarily a neighborhood of wood houses and flats stretching west to Van Ness Avenue, the area had no widely accepted name. It was referred to in relative terms: from the western part of the city it was a downtown residential area; from the Ferry Building it was uptown.

When the term “tenderloin” was first used in San Francisco, it was not the name of a specific district and the word was not capitalized; rather it characterized various districts: The Barbary Coast or downtown tenderloin, various scattered street corners, and the future historic district, called the uptown tenderloin. The term tenderloin was coined in New York and spread across the country; for example, there were tenderloins in Chicago (San Francisco Call 1910c) and Los Angeles (San Francisco Call 1909a). According to The Encyclopedia of New York, the Tenderloin was “A nightclub district in Manhattan during the 1880s … The name refers to extortion payments made to the police by legitimate and illegitimate businesses in the area … the district contained the greatest concentration of saloons, brothels, gambling parlors, dance halls, and ‘clip joints’ in the city.