SAN FRANCISCO CITY HALL

Description

Essentials about the San Francisco City Hall in brief

San Francisco’s City Hall is definitely one of the most beautiful city halls in the world. The current building is the rebuilt City Hall, which was completely destroyed during the great earthquake of 1906. The building is a monument of the American Renaissance period (1880-1917) built in the Beaux-Arts style. It is due to the so-called City Beautiful initiative, whose goal was to make cities more livable.

The building and the history of the San Francisco City Hall

The 119-meter-long and 83-meter-wide building has a total area of more than 46,000 square meters and occupies two entire street blocks between Van Ness Avenue and Polk Street. The City Hall’s dome, modeled after the Invalides Dome in Paris, is the fifth largest in the world. It has a diameter of 20 meters and rises 94 meters. A small side blow for the capital of the USA: The City Hall in San Francisco is thus a full 35 centimeters higher than the Capitol in Washington D.C.

The upper floors of the rotunda are open to the public. In the building, busts commemorate the two politicians murdered in the City Hall in 1978, George Moscone, the mayor of San Francisco, and Harvey Milk, a congressman and civil rights activist who publicly admitted his homosexuality. San Francisco’s City Hall is no stranger to violence, by the way. In 1960, there were serious clashes with police during student protests.

In 1989, City Hall was again damaged by an earthquake. The Loma Prieta earthquake rotated the dome ten centimeters on its foundation, whereupon attempts were made to make City Hall more resistant to earthquakes. To do this, the anchoring between the building and its foundation was lifted. In the event of an earthquake, the mass of the dome acts like a pendulum, which can cause the building to swing and eventually collapse. To counteract this, the building was underpinned with hundreds of insulating bodies made of rubber and corrosion-resistant steel. These are designed to mitigate the seismic waves before they hit the structure.

Visiting the San Francisco City Hall

There are several ways to visit the City Hall. On the first floor there are exhibition rooms where temporary exhibitions are held. Those who want to learn about City Hall in detail can take part in a free guided tour. And those who want to immerse themselves in the politics of the city can watch the Board of Supervisors meetings at 2 p.m. Tuesday.