Notice lunette with name "Hotel du Midi." This was originally a Basque residential hotel and there were other Basque hotels and businesses along Broadway and Stockton. The area of Powell/Broadway/Mason was also a center of Mexican American residence from around 1915 into the 1940s, hence the presence of the Church of Our Lady of Guadalupe on Broadway above Mason Street. The business on the corner of Broadway, next to the hotel entrance, was a Mexican bakery as late as the 1950s and there were Mexican restaurants on Powell into the 1970s.
Original photographs and layout by Mary Leong. Edited for web by Malcolm Collier.