A Reddit query about a family ancestor's Van Ness Avenue hotel reveals that Simeon Wenban's residence stood at 1920 Van Ness before the 1906 earthquake, while his hotel was actually at Sutter and Mason.

The corner of Jackson and Van Ness holds a quiet lesson in San Francisco's layered history. A century ago, 1920 Van Ness Avenue was home to Simeon Wenban, a silver mining pioneer who founded the Cortez Silver Mine in Nevada and built his San Francisco residence there in 1888. Today, the site is just another address on a corridor in transformation.

Wenban's connection to the avenue runs deeper than his home. He also constructed the Wenban Hotel at Sutter and Mason streets—distinct from Van Ness, though often conflated in family memory. Both properties met the same fate: destroyed in the 1906 earthquake and subsequent fires. A period photograph from SF Memory shows the ruins at Jackson & Van Ness, with the Wenban residence site visible on the far corner.

The Wenban Hotel, offered to the Bohemian Club as a gift in 1892, was declined by members who worried about maintenance costs. It too was dynamited during the disaster to halt the fire's spread.

Current sources don't identify what specific building occupies 1920 Van Ness today, but the avenue itself is in constant flux. Recent permits show $3.5 million in alterations at 799 Van Ness and various changes up and down the corridor, from 999 Van Ness to 3250 Van Ness.

The pattern repeats: what stands today replaces what stood yesterday, and the city's memory gets rewritten with each new permit.