Six and eight storey brick hotels with painted iron fire escapes, and the Riviera Hotel that Ant-Man used as the Milgrom Hotel.
What Tenderloin looks like
Jones Street runs downhill from Geary Street toward Market, between six and eight storey brick hotels with painted iron fire escapes stacked the height of each facade. , on the corner at Geary, keeps its original bay windows repeating floor after floor under a gilded cornice.
A restored row of neon hotel signs runs along Eddy Street, starting at the Verona on the corner of Leavenworth and continuing east past the McKinney, the Fairfax and the Jefferson. The stands on the same corner, a four storey steel frame building faced in reinforced brick, its arched window heads and Renaissance Revival trim from 1907. Its ground floor is the Tenderloin Museum now.
On Geary Street the keeps a domed Moorish Revival front from 1917, arched windows set behind a row of horseshoe arches over the sidewalk doors. Farther south, where Jones Street meets Market and McAllister, the domed faces the plaza with its colonnaded portico. A modern high rise hotel tower, the Hilton, rises on O'Farrell Street.
The district runs from Geary Street to Market Street and from Mason Street to Van Ness Avenue, its 408 contributing buildings mostly three to seven storeys and raised between the 1906 earthquake and the Great Depression. Storefronts change at street level while the brick and terra cotta above them stays largely intact.
Shot in Tenderloin
Ant-Man used the at Jones and Ellis Streets as the fictional Milgrom Hotel. A block over on Ellis Street, the real shelter at is where Chris Gardner and his son find a room in The Pursuit of Happyness. On O'Farrell Street, Eddie Brock's apartment in the second Venom film is a real address too.
Ant-Man, 2015
The Milgrom Hotel
The fictional Milgrom Hotel, where Scott Lang stays with his friend Luis, is the real Riviera Hotel at Jones and Ellis Streets. The production shot the exterior as it stands and gave it a different name for the film.
The Pursuit of Happyness, 2006
The homeless shelter
Chris Gardner and his son find a room for the night at Glide, the real shelter at Ellis and Taylor Streets where Gardner stayed while homeless in 1981. They needed to arrive by five in the evening to get a bed.
Venom: Let There Be Carnage, 2021
Eddie Brock shares this real O'Farrell Street address with Venom and a couple of chickens. It was one of only a few real San Francisco exteriors in a film mostly shot at Leavesden Studios in England.
What Tenderloin can double for
Historic Core in Los Angeles, California
The Fifth Street Historic District has the same three to seven storey single room occupancy hotels built between 1906 and 1922, with Beaux Arts and Italianate window trim close to the Tenderloin's own stock. Look around Fifth and Main Streets for the closest brick corner hotels. Palm trees and wider, flatter streets give Los Angeles away in a high shot. The Tenderloin's numbered avenues run downhill on a steeper grid than the Historic Core's flat blocks. Try searching brick corner hotels now.
Downtown Eastside in Vancouver, British Columbia
Hastings Street keeps the same run of early twentieth century single room occupancy hotels over ground floor storefronts, several with the same style of painted iron fire escapes stacked up the facade. Vancouver has doubled for American downtowns on screen for decades. This stretch is close to the Tenderloin in scale and age. Vancouver's mountains show at the edge of a wide shot. Its own street signage and mailboxes are the giveaways a tighter frame avoids. Try searching painted iron fire escapes now.
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