HISTORIC CITY HALL, SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA - andresalvador's Photos- powered by SmugMug

andre' salvador
PHOTOGRAPHY

The City Hall of San Francisco California, opened in 1915, in its open space area in the city's Civic Center, is a Beaux-Arts monument to the brief "City Beautiful" movement that epitomized the high-minded American Renaissance of the period 1880-1917. The present building is actually a replacement for an earlier City Hall that was completely destroyed during the 1906 Earthquake. this building is now in the National Register of Historic Places.

The architect was Arthur Brown Jr., whose attention to the finishing details extended to the doorknobs and the typeface to be used in signage. Brown also designed San Francisco's War Memorial Opera House, Veterans Building, Temple Emanuel, Coit Tower and the Federal office building at 50 United Nations Plaza.

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andresalvador > This is the front of the city hall. The front and the rear side are identical except for the elevation of the street from the ground floor level. The city hall faces the United Nations Plaza and it the official 1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett Place, San Francisco.

andresalvador > Another view taken fom Larkin Street. San Francisco's historic City Hall has now been renovated to be fully accessible to people with disabilities, including the addition of audible infrared signage for individuals who are blind or visually impaired.

andresalvador > The city hall is vast, totalling over 500,000 square feet (46,000 m²) and occupying two full blocks of San Francisco. Its dome, which owes much to Mansart's dome of Les Invalides, Paris, is the fifth largest dome in the world, rising 307.5 feet (94 m) above the Civic Center national historic district. It is fourteen inches (356 mm) higher than the United States Capitol.

The Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989 damaged the structure, and twisted the dome four inches (102 mm) on its base. Afterwards work was undertaken to render City Hall earthquake resistant through a base isolation system. In an earthquake, the mass of the dome acts as a pendulum, rocking the building's structure and tearing it apart. The base isolation system of hundreds of rubber and stainless-steel insulators inserted into City Hall's underpinnings has the effect of disrupting seismic waves before they can affect the structure. As of 2002 San Francisco's City Hall is the world's largest base-isolated structure—a triumph of seismic retrofitting.

andresalvador > A closer view of the fifth largest dome in the world

andresalvador > The main and rear entrance doors all lead to the great rotunda and the grand stairway. The three windows above these doors are the windows of the mayor's office.

andresalvador > A closer look at the entry door with its intricate steel grilles.

andresalvador > As you approach the mayor's office, framed by this corinthian column capital, and facing the great rotunda space is this inscription that reads,

O•GLORIOVS•CITY•OF•OUR
HEARTS•THAT•HAST•BEEN
TRIED•AND•NOT•FOUND
WANTING•GO•THOU•WITH
LIKE•SPIRIT•TO•MAKE
THE•FUTURE•THINE

andresalvador > The grand stairway at the rotunda. The center of the dome above it is reflected by the pattern on the floor.

andresalvador > A view of the grand stairway taken from the second floor hallway that overlooks the rotunda.

This is the front of the city hall. The front and the rear side are identical except for the elevation of the street from the ground floor level. The city hall faces the United Nations Plaza and it the official 1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett Place, San Francisco.