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San Francisco Chronicle Front Page January 1, 1999
Retooled City Hall Is Finally Ready To Open
By Edward Epstein Chronicle Staff Writer
San Francisco’s City Hall, seen above from the south side, has been polished to a high, shine, with fresh gold on its dome and rubber earthquake bumpers in its basement. It will open to the public on Tuesday. No one could be prouder of this re-born baby than the city’s architects and planners, such as James Kennedy, assistant superintendent of the Department of Public Works. He inspected the tower, which has gold leaf that should last a century. The 83-year-old building is a treasure trove of the unusual - for example, it has its own typeface created exclusively for City Hall signs by the original architect, who also designed everything else, right down to the doorknobs.
San Francisco’s regal City Hall is almost ready to re-open, and it is also ready to reveal some of its secrets, old and The Beaux Arts masterpiece has led a long and storied life in its 83 years. Everybody knows that Joe DiMaggio and Mari Monroe were married there 1954 and that Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk were assassinated there in 1978.
But few know that the building might be the only one in world with its own federally protected typeface, or that the city trying to recruit peregrine falcons to live in aeries outside, the vast dome. There are personal tidbits and ironies, too, such as the fact that only as he enters his fourth years as mayor will Willie L. Brown Jr. finally get to sit in the office where all his predecessors stretching back to James “Sunny Jim” Rolph Jr. presided over the City and County of San Francisco.
To make everyone an instant City Hall expert before the building reopens to the public on Tuesday, here are its Top 10 secrets:
1. The stately typeface on all the signs is called appropriately enough, City Hall. It was hand drawn by Arthur Brown Jr., the detail-oriented architect of City Hall for whom no detail was too small. He even did the doorknobs. City Architect Tony Irons, who oversaw the $300 million, retrofit and renovation had to preserve the type wherever it appeared in the national landmark building. Sign painters now busily lettering doors all around the five-floor City Hall are faithfully duplicating the typeface, the only one allowed in the building.
2. Iorns, like other city officials before him, has been grappling with the building’s pigeon problem. One story says that one reason that the two light courts were covered with concrete in the 1950s was that the Department of Public Works grew tired of cleaning pigeon droppings from the courts’ overhead glass.
But Irons had to restore the light courts, so he had to chase away the pigeons His solution: He has consulted with pigeon experts at the University of California at Santa Cruz. They recommended the city build two nests around the 307-foot-high dome to try to attract peregrine falcons, several of whom live and eat pigeons downtown.
3. Sheriff Michael Hennessey is a happy man. He is moving back to City Hall, although into different offices from those he had before 1995. His 5,200-pound safe, which is also a national landmark because it was in the building back in 1915, is coming back. Hennessey will use it to store seized Property. Let’s hope someone has remembered the combination.
4. On the first floor, the historic cashier cages in City Treasurer Susan Leal’s office will go back into service. But one feature will be missing, Irons says. Brown’s blueprints, which Irons found in the Bancroft Library at the University of California at Berkeley, showed that every cashier’s window was equipped with a leather holster and a .45-caliber pistol. Irons talked historic preservation authorities out of requiring him to restore that equipment.
5. Each of the 11 supervisors is getting a $5,000 allowance to furnish individual 13-by-26-foot offices. Irons said be hopes their selections will be in keeping with the classic Beaux Arts style that Brown mastered. But whatever they choose will become city property after they leave office.
6. There is $400,000 of gold in the dome, with the money coming from the payment that developers make to a city arts fund. The original dome’s gold and copper exterior was misapplied, Irons explained. So the gold flaked off in the 1930s and the copper oxidized, leaving the familiar green copper dome. The new finish was properly applied and will last for a century, Irons promised.
7. The new cafe in the north light court will have a ready market in the stream of people expected to visit City Hall and in the 1,041 coffee slurping city workers who will populate the building. The cafe will be allowed to serve wine, but only after the municipal workers quit for the day at 5 p.m., Irons said.
8. The building’s East Side is no longer on Polk Street. Instead it is at 1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett Jr. Place, perhaps the longest address in America. Goodlett, who died in 1997, was longtime civil rights leader in the city. After his death, Supervisor Amos Brown proposed renaming Fillmore Street for him, but retreated under a hail of criticism. Instead the supervisors and Mayor Brown voted to rename the two-block stretch of Polk Street between Grove and McAllister streets after him.
9. City Hall may be the biggest building in the world that is actually not attached to the ground. The retrofit project included separating the structure from its original foundation and leaving it to rest atop 600 base isolators made of rubber and stainless steel, vulcanized together. When the next big quake hits, the isolators will dissipate the tremor’s shock waves before they can damage the building and its dome, the fifth highest in the world.
10. Willie Brown finally gets to move into the second-floor offices of the mayor. Elected in 1995, Brown so far has had to content himself with makeshift quarters across Van Ness Avenue-in the War Memorial Building. The outer entrance to Brown’s new suite of offices is flanked by two busts, one of Moscone and the other of the slain mayor’s successor, Dianne Feinstein.
From that comes a painful historic confluence. Brown was the last person to see Moscone alive, other than gun-toting assassin Dan White, who brushed past Brown as the Assembly speaker left his friend Moscone’s office.
And it was Feinstein who found Milk’s body in the supervisor’s office, and then announced the double killing to a stunned city.
The assassination tragedy resurfaced during the remodeling. Everyone is reluctant to talk about it, but “physical evidence” of Moscone’s slaying - probably the mayor’s dried blood - was found in the small sitting room where he was shot. It was removed and the city is trying to decide who should preserve it for posterity.
Retooled City Hall Is Finally Ready To Open
By Edward Epstein Chronicle Staff Writer
San Francisco’s City Hall, seen above from the south side, has been polished to a high, shine, with fresh gold on its dome and rubber earthquake bumpers in its basement. It will open to the public on Tuesday. No one could be prouder of this re-born baby than the city’s architects and planners, such as James Kennedy, assistant superintendent of the Department of Public Works. He inspected the tower, which has gold leaf that should last a century. The 83-year-old building is a treasure trove of the unusual - for example, it has its own typeface created exclusively for City Hall signs by the original architect, who also designed everything else, right down to the doorknobs.
San Francisco’s regal City Hall is almost ready to re-open, and it is also ready to reveal some of its secrets, old and The Beaux Arts masterpiece has led a long and storied life in its 83 years. Everybody knows that Joe DiMaggio and Mari Monroe were married there 1954 and that Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk were assassinated there in 1978.
But few know that the building might be the only one in world with its own federally protected typeface, or that the city trying to recruit peregrine falcons to live in aeries outside, the vast dome. There are personal tidbits and ironies, too, such as the fact that only as he enters his fourth years as mayor will Willie L. Brown Jr. finally get to sit in the office where all his predecessors stretching back to James “Sunny Jim” Rolph Jr. presided over the City and County of San Francisco.
To make everyone an instant City Hall expert before the building reopens to the public on Tuesday, here are its Top 10 secrets:
1. The stately typeface on all the signs is called appropriately enough, City Hall. It was hand drawn by Arthur Brown Jr., the detail-oriented architect of City Hall for whom no detail was too small. He even did the doorknobs. City Architect Tony Irons, who oversaw the $300 million, retrofit and renovation had to preserve the type wherever it appeared in the national landmark building. Sign painters now busily lettering doors all around the five-floor City Hall are faithfully duplicating the typeface, the only one allowed in the building.
2. Iorns, like other city officials before him, has been grappling with the building’s pigeon problem. One story says that one reason that the two light courts were covered with concrete in the 1950s was that the Department of Public Works grew tired of cleaning pigeon droppings from the courts’ overhead glass.
But Irons had to restore the light courts, so he had to chase away the pigeons His solution: He has consulted with pigeon experts at the University of California at Santa Cruz. They recommended the city build two nests around the 307-foot-high dome to try to attract peregrine falcons, several of whom live and eat pigeons downtown.
3. Sheriff Michael Hennessey is a happy man. He is moving back to City Hall, although into different offices from those he had before 1995. His 5,200-pound safe, which is also a national landmark because it was in the building back in 1915, is coming back. Hennessey will use it to store seized Property. Let’s hope someone has remembered the combination.
4. On the first floor, the historic cashier cages in City Treasurer Susan Leal’s office will go back into service. But one feature will be missing, Irons says. Brown’s blueprints, which Irons found in the Bancroft Library at the University of California at Berkeley, showed that every cashier’s window was equipped with a leather holster and a .45-caliber pistol. Irons talked historic preservation authorities out of requiring him to restore that equipment.
5. Each of the 11 supervisors is getting a $5,000 allowance to furnish individual 13-by-26-foot offices. Irons said be hopes their selections will be in keeping with the classic Beaux Arts style that Brown mastered. But whatever they choose will become city property after they leave office.
6. There is $400,000 of gold in the dome, with the money coming from the payment that developers make to a city arts fund. The original dome’s gold and copper exterior was misapplied, Irons explained. So the gold flaked off in the 1930s and the copper oxidized, leaving the familiar green copper dome. The new finish was properly applied and will last for a century, Irons promised.
7. The new cafe in the north light court will have a ready market in the stream of people expected to visit City Hall and in the 1,041 coffee slurping city workers who will populate the building. The cafe will be allowed to serve wine, but only after the municipal workers quit for the day at 5 p.m., Irons said.
8. The building’s East Side is no longer on Polk Street. Instead it is at 1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett Jr. Place, perhaps the longest address in America. Goodlett, who died in 1997, was longtime civil rights leader in the city. After his death, Supervisor Amos Brown proposed renaming Fillmore Street for him, but retreated under a hail of criticism. Instead the supervisors and Mayor Brown voted to rename the two-block stretch of Polk Street between Grove and McAllister streets after him.
9. City Hall may be the biggest building in the world that is actually not attached to the ground. The retrofit project included separating the structure from its original foundation and leaving it to rest atop 600 base isolators made of rubber and stainless steel, vulcanized together. When the next big quake hits, the isolators will dissipate the tremor’s shock waves before they can damage the building and its dome, the fifth highest in the world.
10. Willie Brown finally gets to move into the second-floor offices of the mayor. Elected in 1995, Brown so far has had to content himself with makeshift quarters across Van Ness Avenue-in the War Memorial Building. The outer entrance to Brown’s new suite of offices is flanked by two busts, one of Moscone and the other of the slain mayor’s successor, Dianne Feinstein.
From that comes a painful historic confluence. Brown was the last person to see Moscone alive, other than gun-toting assassin Dan White, who brushed past Brown as the Assembly speaker left his friend Moscone’s office.
And it was Feinstein who found Milk’s body in the supervisor’s office, and then announced the double killing to a stunned city.
The assassination tragedy resurfaced during the remodeling. Everyone is reluctant to talk about it, but “physical evidence” of Moscone’s slaying - probably the mayor’s dried blood - was found in the small sitting room where he was shot. It was removed and the city is trying to decide who should preserve it for posterity.
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
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