In 1921 forty Filipino merchant marines pooled their money to purchase a 1907 Victorian house in South Park, a Japanese enclave within SoMa^[1]. Until 1946 Filipinos were not allowed to purchase property in San Francisco. The marines got around this restriction by becoming members of the Gran Oriente Filipino Masonic Fraternity in Manila and purchasing the Victorian house as a recognized organization. The Gran Oriente Filipino Hotel became the first Filipino Masonic Lodge in the United States, and one of the first Filipino-owned buildings in the City.

The Gran Oriente Hotel was a three-story stucco-clad building with a metal gated entrance. Inside, a grand spiral staircase ascended to the top two floors where 24 96-square-foot rooms shared two communal bathrooms. 

Initially, the first floor of the hotel served as the lodge and became a regular meeting place for fraternity members. By 1935 the fraternity purchased two properties across the street from the hotel: a modest single family apartment complex and a building that became the fraternity’s lodge. They began renting hotel rooms to single Filipino men, mostly veterans. Most Filipino men in the City remained single because of anti-miscegenation laws that, until 1948, prohibited marriage between races. While the hotel was occupied by mostly Filipino veterans, the apartment complex across the street was rented out to Filipino families. 

At the end of World War II^[2] the Rescission Act of 1946 annulled veteran benefits promised to Filipino servicemen. 112,000 soldiers were drafted, and 300,000 Filipino soldiers voluntarily joined, expecting these benefits. After the war 6,000 of those servicemen settled in San Francisco. It would be 63 years before the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act authorized a one-time $15,000 lump sum payment to all surviving Filipino veterans as restitution.

In 2018 the struggling Gran Oriente Hotel was sold to non-profit housing developer Mission Housing Development Corporation (MHD)^[3], which used City funds to renovate the building. There are now 27 SRO rooms that will be available to formerly homeless residents through a lottery system as existing tenants leave. MHD has promised that the site will continue to be the hub for future Filipino community support.

^[1] South of Market: https://thesanfranciscophoenix.com/?p=4109

^[2] World War II: https://thesanfranciscophoenix.com/?p=4222

^[3] Visit them at https://missionhousing.org