The San Francisco City Hall, bathed here in Golden State Warriors blue, is a Beaux-Arts beauty with a rotunda taller than the U.S. Capitol building by 42 feet.
It’s the place to attend Planning Commission hearings, confer with da mayor and district supervisors, obtain all sorts of licenses, and be featured in multiple films like Raiders of the Lost Ark, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Dirty Harry, etc.…though it’s not a good place to be assassinated. It’s also a place to be married—more on the wedding experience below.
The principal architect of city hall was Arthur Brown Jr., who graduated from the University of California at Berkeley; he did work at FSU, aka Stanford University, as well. More importantly, he also designed the War Memorial Opera House, Coit Tower, Temple Emanu-el, and many other notable structures.
The original city hall, constructed in 1899, was destroyed in the 1906 earthquake, and moved two blocks to where it is today. It was seismically retrofitted after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake.
Here are two examples of its magnificent spaces:
City Hall has been the scene of many weddings (none of mine), none more notable than that of Joe DiMaggio (361 HRs, .325 BA, and .997 OBP) and Marilyn Monroe (Some Like it Hot, The Seven Year Itch, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes).
This is one of my favorite excerpts from the San Francisco Chronicle, January 15, 1954:
“The time and place of the wedding was kept a closely guarded secret and only about 500 people managed to hear about it in time to turn the corridors outside Municipal Judge Charles S. Perry’s court into a madhouse.
By the time they finished kissing each other exhaustively for the photographers’ benefit, Marilyn’s blonde hair was in disarray, and most of her lipstick had been transferred to DiMaggio’s face.”
A Suggested Covid-19 test from LISA:
Pour a decent dram of your favorite whisky into a glass; see if you can smell it. If so, ‘tis good.
Drink it. If you can taste it, it is reasonable to assume you are currently free of the virus because the loss of the sense of smell and taste is a common symptom.
I tested myself 7 times last night and was virus-free every time!
