San Francisco Examiner Magazine Page 7 January 3, 1999

Light Years

More spaceship than Beaux Arts monument, San Francisco’s just-restored City Hall is a tribute to the engineering and communications design that will carry it into the next century

By Zahid Sardar

The official reopening next week of San Francisco’s rejuvenated City Hall will be more than the celebration of a classically inspired architectural bauble; it will also mark the high point of the greatest building boom the area has witnessed since the crippling earthquake of 1906.

When it was completed in 1916, San Francisco’s City Hall, was Mayor Jim Rolph’s signal to the world that The City had survived, and a defiant symbol of a city proud to be back in less than a decade after the quake. At the time, its steel armature was in vogue, cutting-edge technology. Its design was the nearest thing to a European original, with its domed entryway flanked by theatrical office wings. Indeed, the dome was inspired by the 17th century Church of Les Invalides in Paris, built by Jules Hardouin-Mansart, which also contains Napoleon’s tomb.

Although lauded as one of the most spectacular assemblies of Beaux Arts architecture in the country, San Francisco’s Civic Center has long been the victim of benign neglect and uncertain funding, its many spaces - City Hall, in particular- overcrowded with makeshift offices. Expedient solutions such as trailing telephone and computer cables blighted fanciful baroque interiors and City Hall’s famously photographed cascading central stairway showed signs of disrepair. But no slight to the 1913 design by John Bakewell Jr. and Arthur Brown Jr. of Bakewell and Brown, was as damaging as the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989. The quake rendered the once suitably grand and relatively efficient office building a wreck, adding untold years to its aging beauty; it revealed structural flaws and engineering deficiencies behind fallen plaster. For nearly seven years, while funds were garnered for its restoration, scaffolding and plywood shoring covered City Hall’s marble-clad interiors. The giant dome - designed to shift slightly during a quake - had twisted precariously in 1989 like a bottle cap on its square base. The magnificent 90,000-ton dome - one of the largest in the country might not have withstood the next big temblor.

Fortunately, the money for seismic upgrades came in time - S78 million from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), $27 million from the State of California and the remainder of the $293 million costs garnered from seismic bonds paid for by San Francisco residents.

Besides conventional shear-walling and bracing, the entire building was readied post by post at the foundation, with flexible footposts called base isolators (engineered by Forell-Elsesser) that allow the massive 500,000-square-foot, two-block square structure to adjust to earth movements.

However, since the funds were mostly earmarked for seismic work the cosmetic restoration and gilding of the copper dome (further damaged during a fire last February) and preservation of the historic structure came only because of the sustained support of Mayor Willie Brown, City architect Tony Irons and the multiple-firm team including Carey & Co. charged with the rehabilitation and restoration of the edifice.

In part, the FEMA finds made it mandatory that the project would aim to protect historical details, despite the murky political brouhaha surrounding the issue. The removal of many makeshift offices from the lower floors of City Hall (now restored to accommodate a child-care center, and two Bakewelland Brown-conceived skylit courts, one housing a city museum, the other for public events) was the center of much of that controversy. The addition of a string of offices for appointed supervisors adjacent to the mayor’s suite was another political mine-field.

But the seamlessly conceived details and improvements deserve praise rather than censure - it will likely be another 80 years before such an opportunity to do things right will occur. Small details such as ceiling light shades recast slightly wider than the originals -to work with energy-saving bulbs - demonstrate the marriage of history with modem-day innovations. Still, although ornate plaster molding is extremely difficult to replicate, it is the invisible communications system slipped behind the restored surfaces of the plaster, marble and granite structure that ought to astound.

Not only is the building better prepared for the severest earthquakes, it is set to respond to power outages and telecommunicating breakdowns anywhere within The City’s administrative network. San Jose-based Ceitronics installed a Smith, Fause, McDonald-designed command central in the basement: the latest computer technologies, and fiber-optic cables and switching systems allow a seamless integration of different off-site city offices.

“It is in essence the brains of all city operations,” says Irons, adding that during the recent blackout in San Francisco, “City Hall was still humming.”

It is a fail-proof system. In less dramatic situations, the new systems allow equally significant advantages: For the first time, all public meetings held at City Hall can now be broadcast to the general public as well as throughout City Hall offices from five public meeting rooms. Video is sent directly from cameras over fiber, via receivers to the basement, and then rerouted instantaneously byway of remote control. The installed fiber-optic infi7astructure also provides for future upgrades as technology changes in the 21st century.

Irons disagrees that such high-tech communications systems render a City Hall building redundant.

“San Francisco has a large population of minorities and the elderly who don’t use computers. Besides, people come to City Hall for the beauty of the building,” he says.

He may be right. This national landmark is still an inspiring symbol, and as the seat of executive and legislative city government, it continues an ancient oral tradition, allowing citizens the benefit of the spoken voice.

Zahid Sardar is architecture & design editor of the Examiner Magazine.

Other Feature Articles

Making San Francisco’s City Hall Smarter for the New Millennium, CEE News Special Report on DATACOM, page 14 July 1999

New Communications System to Boost Public Participation, F.W. Dodge California Construction Link, Institutional Construction Feb.99

San Francisco City Hall’s Seismic Salvation The $293 million restoration reaches the punch-list phase, F.W. Dodge California Construction Link Institutional Construction Feb.99

Timeline of History of San Francisco City Hall, F.W. Dodge California Construction Link Institutional Construction, page 16 Feb.99

Retooled City Hall Is Finally Ready To Open, San Francisco Chronicle Front Page January 1, 1999

A Treasury of City Hall Trivia, San Francisco Chronicle Bay Area Focus January 1, 1999

Light Years, San Francisco Examiner Magazine Page 7 January 3, 1999

Gold-Plated City Hall, San Francisco Examiner Front Page Dec. 30, 1998

S.F. Celebrates Floating City Hall, San Jose Mercury News Page 3b January 6, 1999

Ceitronics: wiring San Francisco for the 21st Century, San Jose and Silicon Valley Business Journal Page 14 January 15, 1999

Retrofitting “City Hall’, Systems Contractor News Front page, con’t page 17 September, 1998

City Hall by the Bay, Sound & Communications Front page, con’t page 18 February 18, 1999