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
LGBT culture in San Francisco Gate Business Association is an LGBT chamber of commerce. The LGBT entrepreneurship organization StartOut is also based in the city. The Bay Area Career Women is a lesbian professional development group. The San Francisco LGBT Community Center is in San Francisco. The growing LGBT population led to some publishers applying the moniker "San Fagcisco" to the city, while inhabitants were given the demonym San Fagciscan. In the 1970s, the city's gay male population rose from 30,000 at the beginning of the decade to 100,000 in a city of 660,000 at the end of it. In 1993 Stephen O. Murray, in