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
International Settlement (San Francisco) International Settlement (San Francisco) International Settlement was a relatively short lived entertainment district within San Francisco, located along a one block stretch of Pacific Avenue between Kearny and Montgomery Streets, whose popularity lasted from 1939 to 1960. Pacific Avenue went through many transformations since its early days of the 1860s when it was a main thoroughfare for the vice-ridden Barbary Coast, and was then lined with brothels and violent saloons. International Settlement was the third major transformation of the Pacific Street district of San Francisco. During the late 19th and early 20th-centuries within San Francisco, the Barbary Coast was a