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 International Airport on a routing of San Francisco – Honolulu – Tokyo. Also in 1961, Lufthansa had begun serving SFO with Boeing 707s operating a routing of San Francisco – Montreal Dorval Airport – Paris Orly Airport – Frankfurt three days a week. Lufthansa then operated Boeing 720B jets on this same routing in 1963 and was also flying Boeing 707 service to Frankfurt via stops in Montreal and London Heathrow Airport the same year. By 1965, Pan American-Grace Airways, known as Panagra, was operating Douglas DC-8 jets on an international routing of San Francisco – Los Angeles – Panama City, Panama