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
San Francisco in the 1970s world. San Francisco also saw a series of racially motivated murders during this time with the Zebra Killings. In 1974, the education system came under scrutiny with public outcries for improvements. City newspapers ran headlines such as "Angry San Francisco Parents Ask State for Help", "Angy Board Members Talk: Why Schools Don't Improve", "School Costs Rose as Enrollment Fell", "San Francisco Staff Still Outnumbers Teachers", and "Board of Education Exempts Many Bilingual Students from School Bus Program". Subsequently, a commission was appointed to study the city's educational problems, which was considered akin to declaring the San Francisco Unified School District