page_title: United Nations Plaza (San Francisco)
section_title: Construction
hierarchical_section_title: United Nations Plaza (San Francisco) / Location and history / Construction
caption_attribution_description: The Civic Center in San Francisco, California, is an area of a few blocks north of the intersection of Market Street and Van Ness Avenue that contains many of the city's largest government and cultural institutions. It has two large plazas (Civic Center Plaza and United Nations Plaza) and a number of buildings in classical architectural style. The Bill Graham Civic Auditorium (formerly the Exposition Auditorium) is one of the few remaining buildings from the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition. The United Nations Charter was signed in the War Memorial Veterans Building's Herbst Theatre in 1945, leading to the creation of the United Nations. It is also where the 1951 Treaty of San Francisco (the peace treaty that officially ended the Pacific War with the Empire of Japan, which had surrendered in 1945) was signed. The San Francisco Civic Center was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1987, and listed in the National Register of Historic Places on October 10, 1978. The Civic Center is bounded by Market Street on the south, Franklin Street on the west, Turk Street on the north, and Leavenworth and Seventh streets on the east. The Civic Center is bounded by the Tenderloin neighborhood on the north and east and by the Hayes Valley neighborhood on the west; Market Street separates it from the South of Market or &quot;SoMa&quot; neighborhood. Its central location, vast open space, and the collection of government buildings have made and continue to make Civic Center the scene of massive political rallies. It has been the scene of massive anti-war protests and rallies since the Korean War. A monument to James Lick and the Manifest Destiny is located in the middle of Fulton Street between the Library and the Asian Art Museum. The section of Fulton Street between Hyde and Leavenworth streets was pedestrianized and re-developed into a monument for the United Nations and the signing of the UN Charter in 1975, when the Bay Area Rapid Transit subway was constructed under Market Street. The 2.6-acre (11,000 m2) pedestrian mall was designed by Lawrence Halprin. It was rededicated in June 1995 by visiting members of the UN General Assembly as part of its 60th anniversary, and renovated and rededicated again in 2005 during the World Environment Day event. Currently, it is the site of a small farmers' market as well as a large equestrian statue of Simon Bolivar. Because the Civic Center is located near the skid row Tenderloin neighborhood, it has a seedy, run-down, high-crime reputation and appearance with large amounts of homeless encampments, which have prevented it from attracting the large amounts of tourists seen in other areas of the city. Despite repeated redevelopment of Civic Center over the years aimed primarily at discouraging the homeless from camping there, large numbers of homeless continue to camp and loiter in the area. &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civic_Center,_San_Francisco" rel="noreferrer nofollow"&gt;en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civic_Center,_San_Francisco&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_of_Creative_Commons_Attribution-ShareAlike_3.0_Unported_License" rel="noreferrer nofollow"&gt;en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_of_Creative_Commons_...&lt;/a&gt;
context_page_description: United Nations Plaza is a 2.6-acre plaza located on the former alignments of Fulton and Leavenworth Streets—in the block bounded by Market, Hyde, McAllister, and 7th Street—in the Civic Center of San Francisco, California. It is located ¹⁄₄ mi east of City Hall and is connected to it by the Fulton Mall and Civic Center Plaza. Public transit access is provided by the BART and Muni Metro stops at the Civic Center/UN Plaza station, which has a station entrance within the plaza itself.
  UN Plaza was designed by a joint venture of firms led by the noted architects Lawrence Halprin, John Carl Warnecke, and Mario Ciampi; Halprin designed the large sunken fountain. The plaza was dedicated in 1975 to commemorate the formation of the United Nations and the signing of the Charter of the United Nations on 26 June 1945. Since its dedication, the plaza was refurbished in 1995 and 2005, and in Spring 2018, three redesign proposals were proposed for public review.
context_section_description: In the original design, UN Plaza features included 117,000 sq ft (10,900 m²) of brick paving, laid in a herringbone pattern, and 20,000 sq ft (1,900 m²) of grass lawn. The paving in the southwest part of UN Plaza, near the border with Market Street, is interrupted by a cross formed by granite blocks inlaid with brass which indicate the coordinates of San Francisco used to measure distances to other cities. It is the site of the original City Hall. The pedestrian promenade along the Fulton alignment was lit with 16 light standards and featured 24 wood slat benches along the outer edges along with 192 London plane and black poplar trees. As mentioned above, the focal point was intended to be a large fountain executed in granite slabwork. The design of UN Plaza is credited to the landscape architecture firm of Halprin & Associates, with Don Carter as principal-in-charge, and Angela Danadjieva (who later served as lead designer for Freeway Park in Seattle) as the landscape architect.
  Several commercial buildings were demolished to make way for the new plaza; only the Orpheum Theater (1925), 1 United Nations Plaza (1932), and the Federal Building (1936) were retained. United Nations Plaza was constructed from January to June 1975, following the reconstruction of Market Street after the cut-and-cover excavation for the Market Street Subway. It was dedicated in 1975 to commemorate the formation of the United Nations and the 30th anniversary of the signing of the Charter of the United Nations on 26 June 1945. Mayor Joseph Alioto dedicated the first tree on the plaza—to honor the late UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld—on June 26, 1975.
caption: Granite latitude and longitude inlays at UN Plaza (2013)
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