Chan Is Missing - Hotel St. Paul
Chan Hung resided at the Hotel St. Paul at 935 Kearny Street (map). Jo and Steve go there a number of times to try to find him but each time he was, er, missing.
Then … In this composited vertical panorama of Jo parked in front of the hotel note its art deco sign. Note too across Kearny the Chevron Chinatown service station with its Chinese styled buildings. The Sentinel Building, aka Columbus Tower, is partially visible on the left and on the right across Jackson Street from the gas station is the empty lot where the International Hotel used to be before being callously demolished in 1979, only months before this scene was filmed.
… and Now, the hotel is still there but has been renamed Hotel North Beach; how neat that the original art deco sign was retained. A modern extension of the Sentinel Building with commendable integral styling has replaced the gas station and across Jackson a new residential International Hotel opened in 2005 on the site of the old - a long-overdue salve on the wound caused by the City’s brutal overnight eviction of its elderly residents in 1977.
…. In 1960 … Stepping back in time a little more, here’s a 1960 photo of the Sentinel Building from FoundSF showing the gas station before its structure was orientalized, the original red-brick International Hotel and off to the right the Hotel St. Paul blade sign at the corner of Kearny and Pacific.
Trivia for Trekkies: in this 1986 scene from Star Trek - The last Voyage Home Kirk, Spock et al appeared at this same location. Note the blade sign partially visible above the Winchell’s sign. By then the International hotel had been demolished.
Then … As Steve exits the hotel you can see the name written on the overhead glass.
…. In 2007 … an archival Google Street View image from 2007 captured the same Kearny Street doorway when it was being remodeled as a window. The hotel still had its original name then.
… and Now, here it is today. Note the blade sign on the corner of the building - compare it to the original on the far right side of the 1960 image above; the name was simply changed at the top.
Around the corner on Pacific two ghost signs on the side of the hotel still display the original name.
Then … They return later. Note that the door is an in-swinging half-glass single door whereas the earlier exterior view of the main entrance (see the Then image above) shows an out-swinging all-glass double door.
… and Now, director Wang has confirmed to CitySleuth that this staircase was filmed inside the Hotel St. Paul. The closest match that CitySleuth found at the hotel is the one below, looking down to the converted main entrance; the issue of the different doors is still unexplained.
They knock on Chan’s door but there’s no answer. CitySleuth recently walked the Hotel North Beach corridors; they had not been modernized but he found them not to match the styling in this movie shot. What’s more, a corridor junction next to an exterior window, as below, doesn’t exist there, suggesting that it was filmed elsewhere. Except director Wang recalls that it was indeed filmed in the St. Paul.