The Tenderloin has been a downtown residential community since shortly after the California Gold Rush in 1849 . However , the name " Tenderloin " does not appear on any maps of San Francisco prior to the 1930s ; before then , it was labeled as " Downtown " , although it was informally referred to as " the Tenderloin " as early as the 1890s . The area had an active nightlife in the late 19th century with many theaters , restaurants and hotels . Notorious madam Tessie Wall opened her first brothel on O'Farrell Street in 1898 . Almost all of the buildings in the neighborhood were destroyed by the 1906 earthquake and the backfires that were set by firefighters to contain the devastation . The area was immediately rebuilt with some hotels opening by 1907 and apartment buildings shortly thereafter , including the historic Cadillac Hotel . By the 1920s , the neighborhood was notorious for its gambling , billiard halls , boxing gyms , " speakeasies " , theaters , restaurants and other nightlife depicted in the hard boiled detective fiction of Dashiell Hammett , who lived at 891 Post Street , the apartment he gave to Sam Spade in '' The Maltese Falcon '' . Also around this time , due to Red Light Abatement Act , Prostitution and other vice began to be pushed out from the Barbary Coast district to the more southern and less business-occupied Tenderloin
1906 earthquake
1906 San Francisco earthquake
Tenderloin, San Francisco