The original City Hall structure, completed in 1898 at McAllister and Larkin Streets, collapsed in a heap during the 1906 earthquake. The focal point of the Civic Center, the current City Hall, was designed by John Bakewell and Arthur Brown. This 1915 building covers two city blocks bounded by Polk, McAllister, Van Ness, and Grove. The huge lead-lined dome is modeled after Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome and dominates the area, rising 301 feet above the street, higher than the Capitol dome in Washington D.C. The building, 400 feet long and 300 feet wide, has an exterior of granite from the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. In 1960, civil rights and freedom-of-speech protesters were washed down the central stairway with fire hoses. Mayor Dianne Feinstein was married at City Hall in 1980 and invited the entire city to her wedding reception. Badly damaged by the 1989 earthquake, City Hall’s arches were supported by large wooden struts until the building was closed in 1995 for seismic retrofitting. (San Francisco’s previous City Hall was built of inferior materials, including trash and newspaper, by a corrupt city administration.)

Respectfully taken from SAN FRANCISCO SECRETS by John Snyder

Chronicle Books 1999

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Harvey Milk

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gavin Newsom

San Francisco Mayor 2004 - 2011

Willie Brown

San Francisco Mayor1996 - 2004

Dianne Feinstein

San Francisco Mayor 1978 - 1988

George Mosccone

San Francisco Mayor 1976 - 1978

 

 

 

 

The Goddess of Progress

On April 17, 1906, the dome atop San Francisco's City Hall that was completed in 1896 supported a twenty-foot statue by F. Marion Wells. The Goddess of Progress, with lightbulbs in her hair, held a torch aloft in her right hand, causing some contemporary accounts to refer to it as the Goddess of Liberty. The statue was so securely mounted that on April 18, 1906, when City Hall and the city around it lay in ruins from the great earthquake-fire, it continued to stand at the peak of the now exposed steel tower. After workmen brought it down from the precarious perch when the building was finally torn down in 1909 the statue fell from a wagon and this 700-pound head broke off.