Hotel Hartland and Geary Arms

“Late Afternoon – Gibbous Moon” (2007 Survey)

(716/1) 901–915 Geary Street; Hotel Gartland, Hotel Hartland. Stores and mid-priced hotel with 150 rooms and 129 baths 6B stories; steel frame structure with reinforced brick walls; polychrome brick with marble inlay, rusticated base, four-story galvanized iron bay windows and cornice; three-part vertical composition; Renaissance/Baroque ornamentation; storefronts: three southern most storefronts on Larkin intact with tile vestibule paving, angled display windows, tile bulkheads, transoms; signs: corner blade sign: “Hotel Hartland” with neon removed above neon blade sign: “Woerner’s Cigars Liquors,” and blade sign: “Gangway” above ship’s prow at 841 Larkin; alterations:storefronts along part of Larkin and hotel entry, vestibule and lobby.. Original owner: Patrick J. Gartland, street paving contractor. Architects: Rousseau and Rousseau. 1913.

(716/lA) 925 Geary Street; Geary Arms Apartments. Apartment building with forty two- and three-room units. 5B stories; brick structure; four-story galvanized iron bay windows, beltcourses; three-part vertical composition; Renaissance/Baroque ornamentation; vestibule: marble steps and walls, cornice molding, hanging iron and glass lamp; signs: plaque next to entry: “925 Geary Apts.”; alterations: security gate, front door. Original owner: Patrick J. Gartland. Architects: Rousseau and Rousseau. 1913.

At once both elegant and imposing, and abundant with ornamental detail, the Hartland Hotel and Geary Arms Apartments are standouts among the neighborhood’s residential buildings. Both were originally owned by a street paving contractor named Patrick J. Gartland, and were both designed by the prolific Rousseau and Rousseau, an architectural firm that enriched the district with seventeen buildings.

“Hartland” (2004)

For reasons that are to me a mystery, the Hartland’s blade sign was completely ignored when the hotel was renovated. Woerner’s has been a Tenderloin landmark for more than sixty years.