San Francisco City Hall

The City Attorney of San Francisco is an elected position in the City and County of San Francisco, California. While city-county consolidation resulted in the unified government attaining both a city attorney and a district attorney, the two positions are separate and serve different purposes. Whereas District Attorney office is, as is the case throughout the United States, charged with prosecuting crime (i.e. has the equivalent function of a Prosecutor's Office in other legislations), City Attorney provides legal services to the Mayor, Board of Supervisors, and the rest of the city and county administration, examines surety bonds, contracts and ordinances and represents the city and county administration in civil claims, formally as a representative of People of the State of California. The City Attorney is assisted by a number of Assistant City Attorneys.

San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk were shot and killed in San Francisco City Hall by former Supervisor Dan White on November 27, 1978. White was angry that Moscone had refused to reappoint him to his seat on the Board of Supervisors, from which he had just resigned, and that Milk had lobbied heavily against his reappointment. These events helped bring national notice to then-Board President Dianne Feinstein, who became the first female mayor of San Francisco and eventually U.S. Senator for California. White was subsequently convicted of voluntary manslaughter, rather than first-degree murder. The verdict sparked the "White Night riots" in San Francisco, and led to the state of California abolishing the diminished capacity criminal defense. It also led to the urban legend of the "Twinkie defense", as many media reports had incorrectly described the defense as having attributed White's diminished capacity to the effects of sugar-laden junk food. White committed suicide in 1985, a little more than a year after his release from prison.

An outdoor 1926 bronze statue of Abraham Lincoln by Armenian American artist Haig Patigian is installed in Civic Center, San Francisco, California.

The Main Library is the primary library of the San Francisco Public Library, located in San Francisco's Civic Center.

The San Francisco War Memorial and Performing Arts Center (SFWMPAC) is located in San Francisco, California. It is one of the largest performing arts centers in the United States. It covers 7.5 acres (3 hectares) in the Civic Center Historic District, and totals 7,500 seats among its venues.

The Museum of Performance + Design, formerly the San Francisco Performing Arts Library & Museum, is located in the Bayview District of San Francisco, California at 2200 Jerrold Avenue, Ste. T. The Museum collects and makes accessible materials about the performing arts, with a special emphasis on documenting and preserving the San Francisco Bay Area’s rich and diverse performing arts heritage from the Gold Rush to the present. The museum produces public and educational programs, provides library services to researchers, and conservation and archival services to performing arts institutions. The Museum's collection includes personal papers of prominent artists, original costumes and design renderings, audio-visual recordings of live performances, original artwork, other artifacts, and ephemera. The Museum also serves as the official archives for many local performing arts organizations including the San Francisco Ballet, San Francisco Opera, Stern Grove Festival, and the San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival.

The Herbst Theatre is an auditorium in the War Memorial and Performing Arts Center in the Civic Center, San Francisco. The 928-seat hall hosts programs as diverse as City Arts & Lectures, SF Jazz, and San Francisco Performances.

Civic Center Plaza, also known as Joseph Alioto Piazza, is the 4.53-acre (1.83 ha) plaza immediately east of San Francisco City Hall in Civic Center, San Francisco, in the U.S. state of California. Civic Center Plaza occupies two blocks bounded by McAllister, Larkin, Grove, and Carlton B. Goodlett (the section of Polk between City Hall and the plaza was renamed for Dr. Goodlett in 1999), divided into a north block and south block by the former alignment of Fulton Street. The block north of Fulton is built over a three-story parking garage (completed in 1960); the block south of Fulton lies over a former exhibition space, Brooks Hall (completed in 1958).

Brooks Hall (originally Civic Center Exhibit Hall, nicknamed Mole Hall and Gopher Palace) is a disused 90,000 sq ft (8,400 m2) event space underneath the southern half of Civic Center Plaza in San Francisco; a parking garage occupies the space under the northern half. It was built in late 1950s for the cost of $4,500,000, and dedicated on April 11, 1958. It was named after Thomas A. Brooks, a chief administrative officer of city and county of San Francisco, who retired the same year the building was dedicated.

The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC or PUC) is a regulatory agency that regulates privately owned public utilities in the state of California, including electric power, telecommunications, natural gas and water companies. In addition, the CPUC regulates common carriers, including household goods movers, passenger transportation companies such as limousine services, and rail crossing safety. The CPUC has headquarters in the Civic Center district of San Francisco, and field offices in Los Angeles and Sacramento.

The San Francisco Veterans Memorial is a memorial commemorating veterans in San Francisco's Civic Center, in the U.S. state of California. The stone octagon memorial, located across from San Francisco City Hall between Herbst Theatre and War Memorial Opera House, was dedicated in 2014. Inscribed in the stone is Archibald MacLeish's poem, "The Young Dead Soldiers Do Not Speak".

The War Memorial Opera House is an opera house in San Francisco, California, located on the western side of Van Ness Avenue across from the west side/rear facade of the San Francisco City Hall. It is part of the San Francisco War Memorial and Performing Arts Center. It has been the home of the San Francisco Opera since opening night in 1932. It was the site of the San Francisco Conference, the first assembly of the newly organized the United Nations in April 1945.