War Memorial - Where the UN Charter Was Signed

War Memorial - Where the UN Charter Was Signed

Photo: Ken Lund from Reno, Nevada, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0 (cropped)

A stop on San Francisco, District by District, a free self-guided tour.

Across Van Ness Avenue stand twin buildings from 1932: the War Memorial Opera House on the left and the Veterans Building on the right, built to honor those who served in World War I.

In the spring of 1945, before the war had ended, delegates from 50 nations gathered here for the conference that created the United Nations. The big sessions met in the Opera House, and on June 26, 1945, the delegates signed the United Nations Charter in the Veterans Building's theater, today the Herbst Theatre. Six years later, in September 1951, the Opera House hosted the signing of the Treaty of San Francisco, which formally ended the war with Japan.

The Opera House is home to the San Francisco Opera and the San Francisco Ballet. Stand in the Memorial Court between the two buildings and look back toward City Hall.

More on Wikipedia: War Memorial Opera House · Charter of the United Nations · Treaty of San Francisco

Stops on this tour

  1. Ferry Building and the Embarcadero - Where the City Met the World
  2. Financial District and Jackson Square - Gold Rush on the Old Shoreline
  3. Chinatown - The Neighborhood That Refused to Move
  4. North Beach and Telegraph Hill - Little Italy and the Beats
  5. Fisherman's Wharf - Italian Boats and Old Ships
  6. Nob Hill and Russian Hill - Cable Cars, Mansions and the Great Fire
  7. The Presidio - Two Centuries Guarding the Golden Gate
  8. Japantown and the Fillmore - Two Communities, One Neighborhood
  9. Haight-Ashbury - From Victorian Suburb to Summer of Love
  10. Golden Gate Park - Sand Dunes Turned Into a Park
  11. The Castro - A Neighborhood That Became a Movement
  12. The Mission - Where San Francisco Began
  13. Civic Center - Domes, Charters and Protest
  14. South of Market - From Rincon Hill to the Tech Boom