United Nations Plaza (San Francisco)

United Nations Plaza
A view of San Francisco City Hall, looking west from UN Plaza (2017)
Location Civic Center
Nearest city San Francisco
Coordinates 37°46′47″N 122°24′50″W / 37.779821°N 122.413988°W / 37.779821; -122.413988Coordinates: 37°46′47″N 122°24′50″W / 37.779821°N 122.413988°W / 37.779821; -122.413988
Area 2.6 acres (1.1 ha)
Created 1975
Designer
Public transit access Muni Metro/BART (Civic Center/​UN Plaza)

United Nations Plaza (often abbreviated to UN Plaza or UNP) is a 2.6-acre (1.1 ha) plaza located along the former alignment of Fulton Street in the block bounded by Market, Hyde, McAllister, and 7th in San Francisco's Civic Center, in the U.S. state of California. It is located 1⁄4 mi (0.40 km) east of City Hall, connected to another public open space, Civic Center Plaza, via the Fulton Mall, and close to the Civic Center/​UN Plaza BART and Muni Metro station.[1]

UN Plaza was dedicated in 1975 to commemorate the formation of the United Nations via the signing of the Charter of the United Nations on 26 June 1945. It was designed by the noted architects John Carl Warnecke, Mario Ciampi, and Lawrence Halprin. Since its initial dedication, UN Plaza was updated in 1995 and 2005. Three redesign proposals were advanced for public review in spring 2018.

History

UN Plaza was installed during the reconstruction of Market Street following the cut-and-cover excavation for the Market Street Subway.[2] It was designed by Lawrence Halprin and opened in 1975.[2] Construction of the plaza was funded by a bond issued in 1968; work began in January 1975 and was completed by June 1975. Mayor Joseph Alioto dedicated the first tree on the plaza to honor the late UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld on June 26, 1975, the thirtieth anniversary of the signing of the U.N. Charter.[3]

The homeless in San Francisco have long occupied the site, dating back to before the construction of UN Plaza.[4] Since 1981, the Heart-of-the-City Farmers Market has been held at UN Plaza on Wednesdays and Sundays, which alleviated the food desert that otherwise existed in Civic Center and the South of Market neighborhoods.[5] In 1994, the fountain at UN Plaza was recommended for removal, as it had attracted a significant homeless population, was the site of bird droppings, public bathing, and public urination, and was called "out of scale", an assertion which was rejected by Halprin, the original designer.[3] An assessment completed in 1995 concluded the fountain was not operating as designed, as only a single pump was still working to supply the jets, and the filtration was completely defunct.[3] A "Walk of Great Ideas" was added to UN Plaza at a cost of US$400,000 (equivalent to $640,000 in 2017), all funded through private donations, in 1995, the 50th anniversary of the United Nations.[6]

The fountain in 2011

In the early 2000s, as an attempt to combat homelessness, the city removed the benches.[4] The city fenced off the fountain and stopped the water temporarily in March 2003 to alleviate the daily burden of cleaning used needles and human feces.[7] A working group commissioned by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors published a report that same month recommending the fountain be removed.[8][9] The renewed calls to remove the fountain were based on many of the same reasons as ten years prior; an article in The New York Times published in 2004 called it "a public toilet, shower, washing machine, brothel, garbage can and drug market all in one".[10] Ultimately, the Board of Supervisors rejected the 2003 proposal,[9] and a new round of refurbishment started in March 2005 at a cost of US$1,500,000 (equivalent to $1,900,000 in 2017).[11]

In 2017, CMG Landscape Architecture were hired by the city planning department to redesign UN Plaza along with the adjoining Civic Center Plaza and Fulton Market. The design goals of the Civic Center Public Realm Plan were to retain the civic scale but encourage pedestrian traffic from local residents and workers. CMG unveiled three proposals in spring 2018:[12]

  1. Civic Sanctuary, a design "that celebrates History" by evoking the Beaux-Arts spirit of the original plan.[13]
  2. Culture Connector, billed as "a vision for an inclusive commons that prioritizes Ecology, Wellness, and Variety" which includes additional trees to shade a promenade between Market and City Hall.[14]
  3. Public Platform, "centered on Performance" by creating flexible plazas for temporary activities.[15]

Of the three proposals, only Civic Sanctuary calls for the restoration of the fountain at UN Plaza.[12] Culture Connector would remove the water features and convert the fountain into a bouldering playground.[4] Public Platform would install a new "iconic, interactive fountain" near the current site on Market.[15]

Design

Obelisk, 2014

Halprin designed UN Plaza as a joint venture with Warnecke and Ciampi under the Market Street/Civic Center Station project.[3] That trio were also responsible for the design of the earlier Hallidie Plaza (1973) next to the Powell Street station.[16] UN Plaza was originally known as the Civic Center Station Plaza according to the 1967 Market Street Design Plan written by Warnecke and Ciampi, which called for "a major civic sculpture" to dominate "the central space and [create] the focus for the activities of the Plaza".[17] The commission for that sculpture became the fountain by Halprin.

In the original design, UN Plaza features included:[3]

  • 117,000 sq ft (10,900 m2) of brick paving, laid in a herringbone pattern
  • 20,000 sq ft (1,900 m2) of grass lawn
  • 16 light standards
  • 24 wood slate benches along the outer edges
  • 192 London plane and poplar trees
  • a large fountain executed in granite slabwork

When Civic Center was nominated for inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP), UN Plaza was noted to provide "a pedestrian approach to the Civic Center and a clear view from Market Street to City Hall."[18] UN Plaza is eligible on its own design merits for inclusion on the NRHP and San Francisco also considers it eligible for inclusion on the California Register of Historic Resources for its original design merits in addition to its historic role in the LGBTQ movement as the site of parades and protests.[19]

For the 50th anniversary of the signing of the U.N. Charter in 1995, a "Walk of Great Ideas" designed by Andrew Detsch was added to UN Plaza.[6] The Walk consisted of eight white granite paving stones inlaid with the preamble to the U.N. Charter in brass, inscribing a list of the member nations on the light standards, adding the U.N. emblem to the center of the plaza, and engraving the preamble for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on an existing 17-foot (5.2 m) tall black granite obelisk, along with new lighting fixtures.[3][6][20]

A second round of refurbishment kicked off in 2005 for the 60th anniversary; planned improvements included a new stone monument to commemorate UN World Environment Day 2005, hanging the flags of all 191 member nations, and the inscription of new member nation names on the light standards. In addition, the city began to increase the number of events booked for the plaza to encourage "a healthy, vibrant environment that anybody can enjoy."[2][11]

Fountain

Open space creates a kind of vacuum for many people. If the pumps go south and aren't repaired, the fountain goes and the place begins to seem lonely and unattractive. So they become vulnerable.

 — Lawrence Halprin, 2003 NY Times profile[9]

UN Plaza Fountain was also designed by Halprin.[12] For Halprin & Associates, Don Carter was principal-in-charge and Angela Danadjieva (who later served as lead designer for Freeway Park in Seattle) was the landscape architect.[4] The granite slabs are intended to symbolize the continents of Earth, and the lowest central block symbolizes a mythical lost continent. Water floods and is subsequently drained from the basin on a two-minute cycle to simulate the ocean's tides. Aerial jets make the fountain's location visible from the street, and also alert spectators to the start of a new flood/drain cycle.[3] Computer-controlled features were intended to detect winds and attenuate pump output accordingly, to avoid splashing passers-by.[4]

The fountain is largely sunken into the surrounding brick plaza with a basin 100 feet (30 m) wide, it contains 673 granite blocks over a total length of 165 feet (50 m); the cost was US$1,200,000 (equivalent to $5,460,000 in 2017).[21] The blocks are inscribed; one carries a quotation from Franklin Delano Roosevelt.[21] According to Halprin, the fountain was meant to be "a place to walk to, sit down, do theater in"[9] and claimed to have created the first space that could actually be used by the public.[22]

Bollards and chains were added around the fountain in the 2005 renovation to prohibit public entry into the fountain,[11] but have since been removed.[22] Because the fountain is registered with the city as part of its civic art collection, removing the fountain would require extensive reviews and public hearings.[20]

Reception

Upon its unveiling, Allan Temko, architecture critic for the local San Francisco Chronicle, declared the fountain was "pretentious schmaltz" that "rarely work[s] and merely toss[es] around empty muscatel bottles."[9][20] Andrew Young, United States Ambassador to the United Nations, called the fountain "a tribute to the U.N.'s goals of seeking peaceful resolutions to international rivalries" at its 1975 dedication.[20] In a 2007 retrospective, current Chronicle architecture critic John King collectively said the "mannered drama of [Halprin's] plazas along Market Street" "haven't aged well".[23]

References

  1. ↑ "United Nations Plaza". San Francisco Recreation & Parks Department. Retrieved October 5, 2018.
  2. 1 2 3 "Newsom officially marks the start of the United Nations Plaza transformation" (Press release). Office of the Mayor, City of San Francisco. March 9, 2005. Archived from the original on 27 September 2007. Retrieved 4 October 2018.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Civic Center Cultural Landscape Inventory (PDF) (Report). Planning Department, City and County of San Francisco. pp. 34–37. Retrieved 4 October 2018.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 Pacheco, Antonio (May 30, 2018). "Another Halprin-designed plaza could be on the chopping block, this time in San Francisco". The Architect's Newspaper. Retrieved 5 October 2018.
  5. ↑ Winokur, Scott (May 30, 1995). "An urban oasis of life-affirming activity". San Francisco Examiner. Retrieved 5 October 2018.
  6. 1 2 3 Epstein, Edward (6 April 1995). "Work Begins on Memorial in U.N. Plaza". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved 4 October 2018.
  7. ↑ Lelchuk, Ilene (March 12, 2003). "City gives up on U.N. Plaza fountain / Can't keep it clean, puts fence around it". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved 2018-10-03.
  8. ↑ United Nations Plaza Working Group; Valente, Lynn (chair) (March 17, 2003). Gateway to the Civic Center: United Nations Plaza Renovation, Presentation of Findings (PDF) (Report). San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Retrieved 4 October 2018.
  9. 1 2 3 4 5 Brown, Patricia Leigh (July 10, 2003). "For a Shaper of Landscapes, a Cliffhanger". The New York Times. Retrieved 4 October 2018.
  10. ↑ Murphy, Dean E. (July 18, 2004). "Letter from San Francisco; A Beautiful Promenade Turns Ugly, and a City Blushes". The New York Times. Retrieved 4 October 2018.
  11. 1 2 3 Fagan, Kevin (March 10, 2005). "San Francisco / U.N. Plaza finally getting new look / Spruced-up site to have more events, outdoor markets". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved 4 October 2018.
  12. 1 2 3 King, John (2018-06-29). "Civic Center makeover: Here's the plan to revamp the heart of SF". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved 2018-10-03.
  13. ↑ "Civic Sanctuary". Civic Center Public Realm Plan. 2018. Retrieved 4 October 2018.
  14. ↑ "Culture Connector". Civic Center Public Realm Plan. 2018. Retrieved 4 October 2018.
  15. 1 2 "Public Platform". Civic Center Public Realm Plan. 2018. Retrieved 4 October 2018.
  16. ↑ King, John (August 16, 2014). "Spoilers: Eyesore buildings that taint their environment". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved 4 October 2018.
  17. ↑ Warnecke, John Carl; Ciampi, Mario (1967). Market Street design plan: summary report (Report). Department of City Planning, San Francisco. Retrieved 5 October 2018.
  18. ↑ Charleton, James H. (November 9, 1984). San Francisco Civic Center: National Register of Historic Places Inventory—Nomination Form (Report). National Park Service. Retrieved 5 October 2018.
  19. ↑ AECOM (April 30, 2018). Draft Initial Study/Mitigated Negative Declaration: BART Market Street Canopies and Escalators Modernization Project (PDF) (Report). San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District. p. 5-45. Retrieved 5 October 2018.
  20. 1 2 3 4 Lelchuk, Ilene (April 18, 2003). "U.N. Plaza's architect to fight redesign / Famed planner calls S.F. plan no answer to drunks, homeless". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved 4 October 2018.
  21. 1 2 Casey, Cindy (March 7, 2001). "UN Plaza Fountain". Art and Architecture SF. Retrieved 5 October 2018.
  22. 1 2 Soltz, Wendy (July 2016). "Lawrence Halprin and Two Modern Spaces". Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective. The Ohio State University and Miami University. Retrieved 5 October 2018.
  23. ↑ King, John (March 13, 2007). "A landscape giant looks back at his roots. They go deep". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved 4 October 2018.
  • Lindsay, Georgia (July 2017). "Bricks, branding, and the everyday: Defining greatness at the United Nations Plaza in San Francisco". International Journal of Architectural Research. 11 (2): 123–136. doi:10.26687/archnet-ijar.v11i2.1159. direct URL
  • Roman Mars. "The Biography of 100,000 Square Feet". 99% Invisible (Podcast). SoundCloud. Retrieved 5 October 2018.
  • "United Nations Plaza". The Cultural Landscape Foundation. Retrieved 5 October 2018.
  • "Parks: United Nations Plaza". San Francisco Historical Photograph Collection. San Francisco Public Library. Retrieved 5 October 2018.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.