Civic Auditorium - Built for the 1915 Fair

Civic Auditorium - Built for the 1915 Fair

Photo: JCruzTheTruth, CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped)

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

On the south side of the plaza, the arched Civic Auditorium opened in March 1915 as the Exposition Auditorium, built for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition. The fair itself, a celebration of the new Panama Canal and of San Francisco's rebirth, spread across the bayfront where the Marina District stands today, but conventions and great concerts were held here.

In 1920 the auditorium hosted the Democratic National Convention, the first held on the West Coast. Over the years it has staged boxing, basketball and rock concerts, and in 1992 it was renamed for Bill Graham, the promoter who had made the Fillmore famous and who died in a helicopter crash in 1991.

The Palace of Fine Arts is the best-known survivor of the 1915 fair, but this building is the one still doing the job it was built for.

More on Wikipedia: Bill Graham Civic Auditorium · Panama-Pacific International Exposition · 1920 Democratic National Convention

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