image: OpenSFHistory / wnp25.1720 View North across UN Plaza under construction.
Histories of UN Plaza, the Tenderloin's Front Porch
Thursday March 7, 2024 | 5:30 - 7:30pm
At the Tenderloin Museum | 398 Eddy St. SF, CA 94102
Free or Suggested Donation ($10) | Register via Eventbrite
Survey the design and activist history of United Nations Plaza, the high-concept public space at the foot of the TL, with presentations by Dr. Linda Day (emeritus professor of city planning), LisaRuth Elliott (co-director, Shaping San Francisco) and Emily Smith Beitiks (Interim Director, SFSU’s Longmore Institute).
Dedicated in 1975 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the signing of the United Nations Charter in San Francisco, United Nations Plaza was designed as a gateway to the city’s grand Beaux-Arts Civic Center, a Modernist-inspired promenade connecting Market Street to City Hall. Its design stirred controversy since before it was ever built, and its actual use often conflicted with its lofty vision; however, nearly 50 years into its existence, UN Plaza has accumulated a rich but complicated history. For being dedicated to an institutionalized global purview, this prominent public space has hosted remarkable home-grown, grassroots activism that has shaped life in San Francisco (and beyond!) in both revolutionary and everyday ways. Join us for a public program that surveys some of these significant moments in the history of UN Plaza, along with its design, pre-plaza history, and more! Ft. presentations by Dr. Linda Day (emeritus professor of city planning), LisaRuth Elliott (co-director, Shaping San Francisco) and Emily Smith Beitiks (Interim Director, SFSU’s Longmore Institute).
Designed by famed landscape architect Lawrence Halprin, UN Plaza exemplifies urbanist idealism overlaid onto a confluence of diverse urban zones: the city’s core civic and cultural district, a transit hub, and a public space for the area’s residents and denizens. That immediate area is, of course, the Tenderloin--Leavenworth Street, the TL’s central North-South artery, once intersected Fulton Street in an awkward joining of the city’s two askew grids where the plaza’s iconic/infamous fountain now stands–making UN Plaza akin to the TL’s “front porch.”
UN Plaza literally and figuratively represents how a well-intentioned built environment can function as a strange attractor for human activity that defies its social engineering. Although conceived as an act of urban revitalization, the plaza has had a manifest presence of homelessness and drug use/dealing since its opening, eliciting cycles of vocal critique and conflicted efforts to rehabilitate this public space; most recently, as drug activity reached a grim new fever pitch in the post-pandemic moment, UN Plaza got reconfigured as a skateboarding and recreation area.
Yet, UN Plaza endures as the site of many significant happenings that testify to the resilience of the people and the importance of having their voices heard in the proverbial town square. It was home to the 1977 occupation of the Federal Building by disability rights advocates and a decade-long AIDS/ARC Vigil amongst other popular demonstrations. Until recently, the plaza had been home to the Heart of the City Farmer’s Market going back to 1981, a more everyday example of the potential of this public space. Join us as we consider the design of UN Plaza’s built environment, explore its activist history, witness its specific legacy, and reflect on what it teaches us about life in the city!