City Hall - Under the Golden Dome
Photo: Torbjorn Toby Jorgensen, CC BY-SA 2.0 (cropped)
A stop on San Francisco, District by District, a free self-guided tour.
Arthur Brown Jr. designed City Hall, which opened in 1915 with a gilded dome inspired by the great domes of Europe. The rotunda and grand staircase inside are usually open to the public on weekdays; check current hours.
The building has seen some of the city's most dramatic moments. In May 1960, students protesting hearings of the House Un-American Activities Committee were washed down the rotunda stairs by police fire hoses, an event often seen as an early spark of the 1960s student movement. On November 27, 1978, former supervisor Dan White shot and killed Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk in their offices here. On a happier note, Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe married here in 1954.
The 1989 earthquake twisted the dome on its base, and a retrofit finished in 1999 set the building on base isolators so it can ride out the next big quake.
More on Wikipedia: San Francisco City Hall · Arthur Brown Jr. · Assassinations of George Moscone and Harvey Milk
Stops on this tour
- Ferry Building and the Embarcadero - Where the City Met the World
- Financial District and Jackson Square - Gold Rush on the Old Shoreline
- Chinatown - The Neighborhood That Refused to Move
- North Beach and Telegraph Hill - Little Italy and the Beats
- Fisherman's Wharf - Italian Boats and Old Ships
- Nob Hill and Russian Hill - Cable Cars, Mansions and the Great Fire
- The Presidio - Two Centuries Guarding the Golden Gate
- Japantown and the Fillmore - Two Communities, One Neighborhood
- Haight-Ashbury - From Victorian Suburb to Summer of Love
- Golden Gate Park - Sand Dunes Turned Into a Park
- The Castro - A Neighborhood That Became a Movement
- The Mission - Where San Francisco Began
- Civic Center - Domes, Charters and Protest
- South of Market - From Rincon Hill to the Tech Boom