International Hotel (San Francisco)
At 3 a.m. on August 4, 1977, sheriff's deputies armed with sledgehammers broke through barricades to evict the last remaining tenants of the International Hotel at 848 Kearny Street. Outside, three thousand protesters formed a human chain, linked arm in arm, trying to block the eviction. The police broke through them too. Inside, elderly Filipino and Chinese men -- some of whom had lived in the I-Hotel for decades -- were carried out of their rooms. It was the culmination of a nine-year battle that had become the defining tenant rights struggle of its era.
Manilatown's Last Stand
The International Hotel was the heart of Manilatown, a neighborhood of Filipino immigrants who had come to San Francisco beginning in the 1920s and 1930s. Many were manong -- elderly bachelor laborers who had worked in the farms and canneries of California and Alaska and retired to the cheap residential hotels of Kearny Street. By the 1960s, urban redevelopment had demolished most of Manilatown, and the I-Hotel was one of its last remaining buildings. When the property owner announced plans to demolish the hotel for development, the tenants and their supporters organized a resistance that drew in civil rights activists, labor unions, students, and community organizations from across the Bay Area.
Nine Years of Resistance
The fight to save the I-Hotel lasted from 1968 to 1977, making it one of the longest tenant resistance campaigns in American history. Supporters formed human barricades, filed lawsuits, and organized political pressure campaigns. The struggle drew national attention and became a symbol of the broader conflicts over urban renewal, displacement of minority communities, and the rights of low-income tenants in cities undergoing rapid development. The elderly tenants at the center of the fight -- men who had spent their lives doing the hardest physical labor America had to offer -- became unlikely icons of a movement that questioned who cities were being built for.
What Remained
After the eviction, the building was demolished. The vacant lot sat empty for years, a wound in the streetscape that served as a daily reminder of what had been lost. Eventually, a new building was constructed on the site incorporating affordable senior housing. The I-Hotel story entered the canon of Asian-American and labor history, taught in universities and commemorated in documentaries and public art. The manong who were evicted that morning in 1977 were elderly men with few resources and no political power of their own. What they had was a community that refused to let them be erased quietly -- and a building that, for nine years, became the most contested piece of real estate in San Francisco.
From the Air
The International Hotel site is at 37.7961N, 122.405W at 848 Kearny Street, at the border of Chinatown and North Beach in San Francisco. Nearby airports: KSFO (11nm S), KOAK (8nm E).