The Hotel Metropole, built in 1908, was added to the National Register of Historical Places in 1979.

It was built as a hotel to offer "forty-eight 'furnished rooms for transient and permanent guests' at fifty cents per day", and also offered space for "a millinery, the offices of C. W. Waldron, a partner of McPherson's, and the C.O.D.

[2] It was deemed notable in 1978 as "a unique Santa Cruz example of turn-of-the-century commercial architecture in the late Italianate style in which pressed-metal ornamentation replaced the more costly and fancy Victorian plaster work it often copied.

The four pediments atop the third-story windows, and the acanthus design cornices are particularly handsome.

The building is an important part of the physical fabric of the Pacific Garden Mall and contributes to the historical continuity and sense of urbanity along the street.