Where Was the Valencia Hotel?
Little did I know when I entered Cherins Appliance store on Valencia Street that I would find answers to a question I hadnt been able to solve. Luckily, Michael Cherin waited on me. During our conversation I asked him if he know where the Valencia Hotel had been. He said, Right here, but then for validation he asked his grandfather, Lou Cherin, who is the family historian. Lou said no, the Valencia Hotel was across the street. Built in 1898, the Valencia Hotel was a four-story wood frame structure with a brick foundation. The Mission district was originally a marshland with creeks and shallow lakes. Landfill began in the 1860s, and in 1888 four hundred acres of solid ground had been created, or so it was thought. For there was still a lake flowing underneath the Valencia Hotel, named by the Spanish The Lake of Our Lady of Sorrows, Laguna de Manatial de Nuestra Senora de los Dolores. The 1906 Earthquake caused the ground to act like an unstable marshland once again, today called liquefa
