William Penn Hotel in downtown San Diego's Gaslamp Quarter carries Historical Foundation marker number 43 at Fifth Avenue and F Street, a designation earned by the building's 1913 construction as the Oxford Hotel — then advertised as the only first-class hotel in the district's shopping and amusement hub. A seismic retrofit and renovation completed between 1999 and 2001 converted the upper floors into 18 residential-style units with city-view skylights and kitchenettes, a furnished-room format that parallels the apartment-hotel model at Palihotel San Diego a few blocks south on the same Fifth Avenue axis. The building's 10,795 square feet of ground-floor commercial space continues a mixed-use pattern dating to the original Oxford, which housed drug stores, jewelers, and restaurants below its 100-plus guest rooms. Heavy furnishings, warm wall tones, and skylight-lit bedrooms define a room style distinct from the standardized chain offerings at Kasa Gaslamp Quarter San Diego on the opposite side of the district. The William Penn's most complex bookings serve convention attendees and location scouts who need a Gaslamp address inside the 16.5-block National Historic District where Victorian-era commercial architecture remains intact.