Luxury Hotels Atlas / Places / United States / San Francisco / The Battery
The Battery
San Francisco, California, United States · Independent · Grand Luxury
The Battery opened as a private members' club in October 2013, in the Musto Building at 717 Battery Street, rebuilt in 1907 after the 1906 earthquake destroyed an 1830s factory on a block that once marked the original shoreline of Yerba Buena Cove. Michael and Xochi Birch, who sold their company Bebo to AOL for $850 million, bought the building, and Ken Fulk designed the interiors, including 14 suites. MICHELIN gave it Two Keys in 2025.
- 14 rooms
- Opened 2013
- Neighborhood: Union Square
- Rooms from 400 sq ft (37 m²)
- Architect: Ken Fulk
- Interiors: Ken Fulk
About The Battery
- The Musto Building was rebuilt in 1907 after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake destroyed an earlier 1830s factory on the site.
- Michael and Xochi Birch, who sold their company Bebo to AOL for 850 million dollars in 2008, bought the building around 2008-09 and opened it as a private members' club in October 2013.
- Interiors were designed by Ken Fulk, and the 14-suite property holds MICHELIN Two Keys as of 2025.
- Entry-level rooms start at 400 sq ft (37 m²).
History
The address at 717 Battery Street sits in what was once the actual waterfront of San Francisco's Barbary Coast, before landfill extended the shore and turned the surrounding blocks into the brick-warehoused enclave now known as Jackson Square — one of the few neighborhoods to survive the 1906 earthquake and fire largely intact. The first building on the site was a factory erected in the 1830s by Alpheus Basil Thompson, who was among the earliest wave of Anglo-American merchants in Mexican California. The Barbary Coast around it was then the city's most notorious district, dense with saloons, dance halls, and the commerce of a port town that attracted everyone from gold-rush prospectors to Shanghai'd sailors.
The original structure burned in the 1906 catastrophe and was completely rebuilt. Through the following decades the rebuilt Musto Factory building housed a candy manufacturer, a crafting business, and eventually conventional office tenants. By the time technology entrepreneurs Michael and Xochi Birch acquired 717 Battery in the years following their 2008 sale of the social network Bebo to AOL, the building was functioning as ordinary commercial space, its industrial bones largely invisible under the accumulated layers of utilitarian occupation.
The Birches commissioned FME Architecture and Design to reimagine the building, initially as a tech incubator. The vision shifted early in the process: what emerged instead was a London-style private members club adapted to San Francisco's particular culture of creative, intellectual, and entrepreneurial energy. Interior designer Ken Fulk was engaged to create an environment of extraordinary layered richness — custom marble surfaces, walnut millwork, stainless accents, original art throughout, four bars, a fine-dining restaurant, a wine cellar, a poker room, and a gym, all woven through a building whose Jackson Square brick and exposed structure grounds the extravagance in the city's nineteenth-century commercial past.
The Battery opened in 2013. Membership is selective and deliberately diverse: the club draws engineers, artists, chefs, venture capitalists, and writers in roughly equal measure, a mix that reflects the Birches' explicit ambition to avoid the monoculture of most private clubs. The fourteen guest suites are open to the public, with staying guests treated as resident members with full access to the club's facilities. The MICHELIN Guide awarded The Battery Two Keys in 2025, and it remains one of the most culturally potent luxury addresses in San Francisco.
The setting
At 717 Battery Street in San Francisco's Financial District, The Battery occupies a building on a block that once marked the original shoreline of Yerba Buena Cove — Battery Street itself named for a cannon emplacement set up by USS Portsmouth sailors in 1846. The Exploratorium is eight minutes on foot, the Ferry Building twelve minutes, and Coit Tower sixteen minutes. Founded by Michael and Xochi Birch in 2013 as a London-style private members' club with hotel rooms, The Battery brought a discreet, intellectually driven luxury concept to the historic Barbary Coast fringe where the Financial District meets the waterfront.
Restaurants and bars
- Cassava San Francisco — Restaurant
Experiences
- Resident Members club amenities — Hotel guests may stay as Resident Members with full access to the club's amenities.
Amenities
- Spa
- Hot tub
- Fitness center
- Wine cellar
Awards
- MICHELIN Two Keys (2026)
Open The Battery in the atlas for live weekend rates, photos, and the full folio.
More hotels in San Francisco
- Four Seasons Hotel San Francisco — Four Seasons · Grand Luxury
- Four Seasons Hotel San Francisco at Embarcadero — Four Seasons · Grand Luxury
- The St. Regis San Francisco — St. Regis · Grand Luxury
- Fairmont San Francisco — Fairmont · High Luxury
- Hotel Drisco — Independent · High Luxury
- The Huntington Hotel — Independent · High Luxury