Outside Washington, D.C., no American city holds a larger ensemble of Beaux-Arts civic architecture than the Civic Center Historic District you have entered, built largely after the 1906 earthquake to remake San Francisco as a monumental city worthy of its ambitions on the Pacific. The City Beautiful movement, which sought to impose Parisian grandeur on American cities through wide boulevards, formal axes, and classical public buildings, was at its peak of influence, and the architects hired to rebuild San Francisco — Arthur Brown Jr., Frederick Meyer, and others — applied its principles rigorously. City Hall anchors the district at the western end of a formal axis.
The Bill Graham Civic Auditorium, the San Francisco Main Library, the War Memorial Opera House, and the Veterans Building line the surrounding blocks in a coherent architectural ensemble. The War Memorial Opera House holds its own moment in history: it was here, in 1945, that the United Nations Charter was signed by representatives of 50 nations, creating the international organization that still operates from its headquarters on the east side of the city. San Francisco was chosen as the signing site because it was perceived as a neutral, optimistic American city far from the blood-soaked fields of Europe.