RON HENGGELER

San Francisco City Hall seen from Franklin Street between the

San Francisco War Memorial and Performing Arts Center and the Opera House

San Francisco.

"That City of Gold to which adventurers congregated out of all the winds of heaven. I wonder what enchantment of the 'Arabian Nights' can have equaled this evocation of a roaring city, in a few years of a man's life, from the marshes and the blowing sand.”

Robert Louis Stevenson

 

“It’s an odd thing, but anyone who disappears is said to be seen in San Francisco. It must be a delightful city and possess all the attractions of the next world.”

Oscar Wilde

San Francisco City Hall seen from McAllister and Van Ness Avenue

San Francisco City Hall seen from McAllister and Van Ness Avenue

The flood lights on City Hall were recently upgraded with LEDs and a new lighting system. In the past, it took two people over six hours to change the color gels on the lights to create new color schemes. Now color changes can happen in moments. While I was photographing City Hall on Thursday night, the building's colors went from the rainbow colors to red, white, and blue in a second. A minute later it changed back to the rainbow.

San Francisco beats the world for novelties; but the inventive faculties of her people are exercised as a specialty. . . Controversy is our forte.

San Francisco Call 1864

City Hall from the Civic Center Plaza

San Francisco's City Hall is a world-class architectural masterpiece. The design is by Arthur Brown Jr. who was a student of Bernard Maybeck and a graduate of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. He took his ideas from the Church of Les Invalides in Paris, which was built in the seventeenth century and later became Napoleon's tomb. The 308-foot-high dome (the fifth largest in the world) was designed so that it would be taller by about a dozen feet than the capitol dome in Washington D.C. The building suffered considerable damage on October 17, 1989 during the Loma Preita Earthquake.

Ron Henggeler

City Hall from Grove and Polk Street

"To restore City Hall after the ‘89 earthquake, architects and engineers embarked on one of the most ambitious retrofit and restoration projects ever undertaken. First, the 171 million pound structure had to be jacked up and braced while its 530 steel columns were sawed off at the base and then set down on base isolators, shock absorbing devices that look like giant motor mounts, made of steel and rubber. New foundations were poured, thousands of pounds of new steel and concrete were added, and the building was restored at the cost of $293 million. Mayor Willie Brown insisted on restoring the building to its original splendor, which meant removing a rabbit warren of offices from two grand sky lit assembly rooms on the main floor.”

NATIONAL TRUST GUIDE San Francisco by Peter Booth Wiley

 

 

Oh friends, put aside these sounds!

Let us be more civil to each other,

And speak more joyfully.

Beethoven

 

From Van Ness and Grove

The San Francisco Opera House across Van Ness Ave from the City Hall

If you’re going to San Francisco,

Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair.

If you’re goin’ to San Francisco,

You’re gonna meet some gentle people there.

For those who come to San Francisco,

Summertime will be a love-in there.

In the streets of San Francisco,

Gentle people with flowers in their hair.

All across the nation,

Such a strong vibration: People in motion.

There’s a whole generation,

With a new explanation, People in motion, People in motion.

If you come to San Francisco,

Summertime will be a love-in there.

 

SAN FRANCISCO by John Phillips 1967