Tiffany Building (San Francisco)

Union Square is a 2.6-acre (1.1-hectare) public plaza bordered by Geary, Powell, Post and Stockton Streets in downtown San Francisco, California. "Union Square" also refers to the central shopping, hotel, and theater district that surrounds the plaza for several blocks. The area got its name because it was once used for Thomas Starr King rallies and support for the Union Army during the American Civil War, earning its designation as a California Historical Landmark.Today, this one-block plaza and surrounding area is one of the largest collections of department stores, upscale boutiques, gift shops, art galleries, and beauty salons in the United States, making Union Square a major tourist destination and a well-known gathering place in downtown San Francisco. Grand hotels and small inns, as well as repertory, off-Broadway, and single-act theaters also contribute to the area's dynamic, 24-hour character.The Dewey Monument is at the center of Union Square. It is a statue of Nike, the ancient Greek goddess of victory.

The Street Artists Program of San Francisco is a municipal arts program in which independent street artists and craftspeople sell their art and craft items in designated public spaces in the city of San Francisco, California. The artists are licensed by the San Francisco Arts Commission and are only allowed to sell work that has been "predominantly created or significantly altered in form" by the street artist. The Arts Commission currently licenses approximately 400 street artists, whose licensing fees cover all program costs. The program generates an estimated $4 million annually for the city's economy.The program was the result of a hard-fought political battle by street artists who were sometimes harassed and arrested by police for selling their work on the city's sidewalks. In response, street artists strategically organized by forming their own guild, hiring a lawyer, and drafting two ballot initiatives in order to create laws that enabled them to sell their work in public places. Some street artists were willing to be arrested time and again in order to draw media attention to their cause and to push for a change in existing laws.

The Philippine Consulate General in San Francisco is a diplomatic mission of the Republic of the Philippines in the United States, representing the country's interests in northern California. It is located in the San Francisco building of the Philippine Center at 447 Sutter Street in central San Francisco, a couple of blocks north of Union Square.

The Dewey Monument is a memorial statue in San Francisco, California, located at the center of Union Square. Union Square is bounded by Geary, Powell, Post and Stockton Streets. The monument is dedicated to Admiral George Dewey and commemorates his victory in the Battle of Manila Bay during the Spanish–American War. Work on the monument began in 1901 and it was dedicated in 1903.

The Grand Hyatt San Francisco is a skyscraper hotel located half a block north of Union Square in San Francisco, California. The 36-storey, 660 room 108 m (354 ft) tower was completed in 1972, as the Hyatt on Union Square and renamed the Grand Hyatt San Francisco in 1990.The hotel had 402 employees before the COVID-19 pandemic, dropping to 28 as of April 2021, mainly due to cancelled conventions in the city. It was closed for around half of 2020, losing about $1 million per day during that time.

San Francisco Fountain, is a 1970 bronze sculpture and fountain by Ruth Asawa, located outside the Grand Hyatt San Francisco in downtown San Francisco, California, in the United States.

The Beacon Grand is a historic 416-room hotel in San Francisco, California. opened in 1928 as the Sir Francis Drake Hotel. It is located at the corner of Sutter and Powell Streets adjacent to Union Square.

450 Sutter is a twenty-six-floor, 105-meter (344-foot) skyscraper in San Francisco, California, completed in 1929. The tower is known for its "Neo-Mayan" Art Deco design by architect Timothy L. Pflueger. The building's vertically faceted exterior later influenced Pietro Belluschi in his similarly faceted exterior of 555 California, the former Bank of America Center completed in 1969.The building's tenants are largely dental and medical professional offices.

The Westin St. Francis, formerly known as St. Francis Hotel, is a hotel located on Powell and Geary Streets on Union Square, San Francisco, California. The two 12-story south wings of the hotel were built in 1904, and the double-width north wing was completed in 1913, initially as apartments for permanent guests. This section is referred to as the Landmark Building on the hotel's website. The 32-story, 120 m (390 ft) tower to the rear, referred to as the Tower Building, which was completed in 1972, features exterior glass elevators that offer panoramic views of the bay and the square below, making the St. Francis one of the largest hotels in the city, with more than 1,254 rooms and suites.

San Francisco Playhouse (formerly SF Playhouse) is a non-profit theater company in San Francisco, California, founded in 2003 by Bill English and Susi Damilano. The theater stages nine plays yearly, including Broadway plays, musicals, and world and regional premieres.San Francisco Playhouse has been home to several world premieres, including Bauer by Lauren Gunderson, Ideation by Aaron Loeb, Grounded by George Brant, and Seared by Theresa Rebeck.As part of its mission to shape and promote the growth of performing arts in the Bay Area, San Francisco Playhouse created the Rising Star Program, which provides theatre tickets to under-served youths in San Francisco and surrounding communities.In 2015, the theater company was awarded the American Theatre Wing's National Theatre Company Grant.During the COVID-19 pandemic, San Francisco Playhouse became one of the first theatre companies in the United States to get permission from Actors' Equity Association to film live actors on stage. The company's on-demand stream of Art by Yasmina Reza premiered on October 24, 2020, to positive reviews.

The Sutter Cinema was located on Sutter Street in downtown San Francisco, just off of fashionable Union Square and a few blocks from Chinatown. It was a walk-up, on the second floor 363 Sutter, occupying the space that had previously been one of America's premiere Chinese-owned night clubs, Charlie Low's Forbidden City, which featured dancer Coby Yee. The Sutter Cinema opened in 1970; the owner/manager, also cashier, was Sexual Freedom League member, and one of Janis Joplin's closest friends in high school, Arlene Elster. She was the first, if not the only, woman to operate an adult theater. The clientele was middle-class. Asian-Americans from nearby Chinatown also frequented the cinema because Elster was one of the few customers of the legendary Sam Wo restaurant to be on friendly terms with its notoriously abusive head waiter Edsel Ford Fong, who she provided with an ample supply of free passes. The Sutter Cinema was unique, because in pointed contrast to the Mitchell Brothers O'Farrell Theatre, Elster was not primarily motivated by money. She was a member of the Sexual Freedom League, held a benefit for it at the cinema, and felt that her participation in the pornographic film industry was an opportunity to spread sexual freedom as well as earn a living. She was showing sex films out of a feeling that sex films should be shown: "the times now not only allow but require films like ours." She would only show in the theater films that pleased her, some made with her partner Lowell Pickett. "Sutter Cinema played films that Elster wanted to see, films in which woman possessed sexual desires and 'made it' just like men." Elster intended to show erotic films that showed more than a penis going into a vagina. She felt that "erotic film needed to be made of, by, and for men and women. Female orgasms need to be portrayed on the screen at an equal rate to male orgasms." "In December 1970, the cinema with Leo Productions sponsored a five-day erotic film festival toward this end" ("to elevate pornographic film to a higher level of respectability." (To accommodate the crowd, the festival was held at the 800-seat Presidio Theater, but a poster for it says "Sponsored by the Sutter Cinema.") Mary Rexroth's film Intersection (1971) had its premiere at the Sutter, where she also showed the Mary Rexroth film Cozy Cool (1971) and gay porn films. Mary Rexroth is the daughter of the late poet Kenneth Rexroth. The First International Erotic Film Festival gained a modicum of literary cache thanks to the presence of festival judges, critic Arthur Knight and erotic book publisher Maurice Girodias. As a result, the festival drew the attention of the producers and talent spotters of the Johnny Carson Show, who invited Elster to do a segment on the program, which aired in January, 1971. By 1975 Elster was disenchanted, because of police harassment (she was arrested 14 times, and paid a fine of $1000) and the lack of quality movies to show. From 1975 to 1976 she sublet the cinema, moved with her lesbian partner to Sonoma County, and, like Fred Halsted, operated a wholesale plant nursery. The cinema closed shortly after.

The Forbidden City was a Chinese nightclub and cabaret in San Francisco, which was in business from 1938 to 1970, and operated on the second floor of 363 Sutter Street, between Chinatown and Union Square.The Forbidden City was one of the first nightlife venues to feature Asian American singers, dancers, chorus lines, magicians, strippers, and musicians, and was entirely managed and staffed by Asian Americans. It was popular with military personnel who were transiting through San Francisco during World War II, as well as Hollywood celebrities, and became the most well-known venue in a golden age of Chinatown nightlife. Some of the featured entertainers would go on to greater fame after launching their careers at the Forbidden City.The club inspired the novel The Flower Drum Song (1957), which became a musical (1958) and film (1961) of the same title. In 1989, the club was profiled in the documentary, Forbidden City U.S.A., by Arthur Dong.