Civic Center, San Francisco Civic Center, San Francisco The Civic Center in San Francisco, California, is an area of a few blocks north of the intersection of Market Street and Van Ness Avenue that contains many of the city's largest government and cultural institutions. It has two large plazas (Civic Center Plaza and United Nations Plaza) and a number of buildings in classical architectural style. The Bill Graham Civic Auditorium (formerly the Exposition Auditorium), the United Nations Charter was signed in the War Memorial Veterans Building's Herbst Theatre in 1945, leading to the creation of the United Nations. It is also where the 1951
History of the Japanese in San Francisco the first Japanese organization in the United States. The San Francisco Japanese School (SFJS) is a Japanese Ministry of Education (MEXT)-designated weekend Japanese school serving the area. The school system, headquartered in San Francisco, rents classrooms in four schools serving a total of over 1,600 students as of 2016; two of the schools are in San Francisco and two are in the South Bay. For elementary students it operates out of the A.P. Giannini Middle School in San Francisco and The Harker School Blackford Campus in San Jose. For junior high school and high school students it operates out of