The Vance Hotel, designed by B. Mackay in the Italianate style, was originally a two-story building with a Mansard third story and a square cupola. The hotel contained more than sixty-five guest rooms and a dining room which could seat 120 patrons.

It was "not excelled by any hotel outside San Francisco for beauty, size, cost and architecture."

In 1902, the mansard story was removed and two stories were built on top of the original two-story base. The addition was designed in a restrained Classical Revival style rather than the exhuberant Victorian style of the original building.

The 1872 façades of the first two floor are intact.

In 1912, a moat bridge was built from the second story of the hotel to a warehouse on the other side of Snug Alley. Hotel guests used the bridge to visit sample rooms where commercial travelers displayed goods.

The Vance Hotel contributes to the Eureka Old Town Historic District which was listed on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) in 1991.

Source: Excerpted from the 1991 NRHP nomination form.