Unbuilt San Francisco: City Hall

In conjunction with the Architecture and the City festival, the San Francisco History Center presents a selection of original architectural renderings and other images which give inklings of a city very different from the one we know today. We encourage you to come view the exhibition Unbuilt San Francisco: Public Spaces on the 6th floor of the Main Library. What's on the 6th Floor will be highlighting selections weekly to tempt you to visit! The collaborative exhibition includes AIA San Francisco, Center for Architecture + Design; Environmental Design Archives at UC Berkeley; California Historical Society; SPUR; and, the San Francisco Public Library.  

Intended City Hall of San Francisco by Augustus Laver, 1871  

Augustus Laver (1834-1898), in Manufacturer and Builder
Intended City Hall of San Francisco, 1871  
wood engraving, 10 x 13”
      
Laver, who had practiced in London, Canada, and the eastern United States, was selected to design San Francisco’s third city hall in 1871. He proposed a Second Empire style, featuring a tower with a mansard roof. Once under construction, the building was projected to far exceed its $1.5 million budget. Laver was dismissed, and the mansard roof eliminated.

The building’s long gestation period included the hiring of seven architects, two of whom had two terms, according to James W. Haas. In 1888, the American Institute of Architects’ local chapter recommended that the City carry out Laver’s plan, but substitute a dome for his mansard-roofed tower. Architect Frank T. Shea drew the final version of the structure, a more Renaissance treatment, and when the building opened in 1899, construction costs had exceeded original estimates by almost $4.5 million.

The building came down in the 1906 earthquake. Shoddy construction was revealed - a new scandal.   In March 1912, voters approved the issuance of bonds with which to build a new City Hall, and to acquire land adjacent to it to build the San Francisco Civic Center. Bakewell & Brown’s new City Hall, dedicated in late 1915, would be the second major building completed in the Civic Center which we know today.