[5] The Cadillac Hotel has been listed as a San Francisco Designated Landmark since 1985;[6][7] and is part of the NRHP-listed Uptown Tenderloin Historic District since 2009.

[6][10] It is a four-story steel beam building with reinforced brick, with a three-part design in a Renaissance Revival/Baroque Revival architectural style with the influence of Art Nouveau.

[11] It pre-dated the majority of the residential building in the Tenderloin neighborhood, which occurred years later around the opening of the Panama–Pacific International Exposition of 1915.

[1] It was noted for being one of the oldest boxing facility in the country, and the practice space for Muhammad Ali, Joe Louis, Jack Dempsey, George Foreman, and Sugar Ray Robinson.

[12] In the 1970s and 1980s, single-residence occupancy (SRO) and tenant rights activism grew, along with a desire to preserve the Tenderloin.