Built in 1866 by Anson Parsons Hotaling to originally be a hotel. Hotaling later moved to the whiskey business. It was also one of the few surviving buildings after the 1906 Earthquake and Fire, thanks to a mile long fire hose that stretched through Fisherman's Wharf and Telegraph Hill. Because of the saving of the building, Charles Field once stated famously, "If, as they say, God spanked the town for being over-frisky, why did He burn His churches down and spare Hotaling's whiskey?"

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After the earthquake and fire, the Hotaling business started to decline. However the building was revived in 1952 when Dorothy Kneedler Lawenda and Harry Lawenda of Kneedler-Fauchere purchased it and made it a center for their wholesale interior decorative design elements firm. The name Jackson Square was adopted, many buildings were renovated and the street became the interior design center for San Francisco for decades.

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During this time, Hotaling Place operated at the turn-around for horse-drawn streetcars and warehouse delivery carriages. Old bay doors, converted to windows line Hotaling Place that once housed draft horses San Francisco was built and re-built on.

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Jackson Square Historic District along with San Francisco was established in 1851. Along with nearby Portsmouth Plaza, Jackson Square was the central business district of San Francisco. The original waterline of Yerba Buena Cove washed-up to Montgomery and Jackson Streets, now filled with the hulls of abandoned ships, like the Arkansas and the Niantic. The waterfront location led to Jackson Square's use for mercantile and financial purposes, consulates and offices, many in use today.

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Jackson Square was headquarters to historical luminaries and legendary merchants, including A.P. Giannini, General William Tecumseh Sherman, Colonel Jonathan Stevenson, James King of William, Mayors Charles Brenham and Ephraim Burr, Domingo Ghirardelli and Anson Hotaling, Paxon Dean Atherton, William Lent, Alexander Grogan and James de Fremery.

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More than any other existing part of San Francisco, Jackson Square recalls the Gold and Silver era and the days of the Vigilante movement.

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The Barbary Coast, north of Jackson Street, had a somewhat different but noteworthy history. Although the present buildings do not date from the 19th century, many of them were rebuilt immediately after the 1906 Earthquake and Fire and embody the spirit and appearance of the earlier City. In fact, this area to the south of Telegraph Hill had an international reputation from the 1850's on.

- https://highhorsesf.com/history