Perched on a cliff, overlooking one of the best views in the world, sits an abandoned, broken-down diner. For years, local families and tourists alike grabbed burgers and drank milkshakes at Louis’ Restaurant at Lands End while watching the waves crash over Seal Rock. A short walk down the hill sits another carcass of a once-iconic building, the Cliff House. The resilient San Francisco institution has survived an exploding dynamite-laden ship and a devastating fire. Today, it’s empty, its doors chained and padlocked as they have been since the pandemic. Perhaps both Louis’ and the Cliff House are destined to end up like another San Francisco institution in ruins below them, the Sutro Baths — once a bustling pleasure pool, now a murky puddle of graffiti and rubble, visited only by rats and seagulls.
Through bureaucracy, sky-high rents or just neglect, these and many more famous buildings in our city are sitting empty. All cities have empty historic sites, but as San Francisco seems to be finally pulling out of the pandemic doldrums, shouldn’t our best buildings be open for business? We decided to figure out why these and many other spots across the city, like Julius’ Castle on Telegraph Hill, or the Alexandria Theater in the Richmond, are ghosts today. For each of the following spots, we asked the owners and district supervisors when, if ever, they might open their doors to San Franciscans again.
Louis’ Restaurant
For 83 years, while other storied San Francisco establishments opened, closed and changed hands, Louis’ Restaurant on Point Lobos Avenue was run by one family. On Valentine’s Day 1937, Greek immigrant Louis Hontalas and his wife Helen opened the small restaurant perched on the clifftop at the western edge of the city. More than a dozen family members worked at the diner over the decades. In 1966, the restaurant narrowly survived a fire — caused by local satanist Anton LaVey, or so he claimed — that took down the Sutro Baths below.
The coronavirus pandemic, however, proved too much for Louis’ Restaurant. Its long history came to a close on July 14, 2020, when the last burger was served by Louis Hontalas’ grandson Tom. Since then, there has been some talk of a reopening. In 2023, there were reports that the National Park Service, which took over ownership of the land in the 1970s, was looking for a new restaurateur. That plan appeared to go nowhere, and SFGATE has learned that structural issues at the old diner may prevent a new tenant from opening up for burgers and shakes anytime soon…