Federal Office Building

1. 1928

   Congress appropriated $3,250,000 for a federal building in San Francisco under an extension of the 1926 Public Buildings Act, and the City gave the government this block, bounded by Fulton, Leavenworth, McAllister and Hyde Streets, to build it on.

   National Register of Historic Places nomination, National Park Service
2. 1930

   Arthur Brown Jr. was commissioned to design the building, then planned as four storeys over a basement; the structural design was C. H. Snyder's and the mechanical plans Leland and Haley's. When the Depression stalled the job, the fifth floor and attic came off the McAllister Street wing and glazed, tooled terra cotta replaced granite on that front and around the courtyard.

   National Register of Historic Places nomination, National Park Service
3. May 16, 1936

   The first purpose-built federal office building in San Francisco. Arthur Brown Jr., architect of City Hall, designed the four-storey granite-clad building around a central courtyard in the American Renaissance style to sit with the rest of the Civic Center. Ground was broken on 17 January 1933 before the money existed; the Public Works Administration granted $2,689,089 that August, construction began in early 1934 employing 300 men, and the building was dedicated on 16 May 1936. Staff of 33 federal agencies moved in. It was vacated in 2007 and rehabilitated in 2013.

   San Francisco New Deal Historic Context Statement, adopted 2023
4. 1942

   Headquarters of the 12th Naval District during the Second World War, with a Navy recruiting station; the courtyard filled with temporary wooden buildings and 21 of the original roof skylights were taken out.

   National Register of Historic Places nomination, National Park Service
5. 1962-1975

   United Nations Plaza, the public square in front of this building, laid out by landscape architect Lawrence Halprin.

   Architecture, Planning & Preservation Professionals: A Collection of Biographies, adopted 2021
6. 1975

   United Nations Plaza was built along the building's south and east sides, closing Fulton and Hyde Streets to traffic, to Lawrence Halprin's design with Mario Ciampi and Associates and John Carl Warnecke and Associates, as part of the Market Street reconstruction that came with BART.

   National Register of Historic Places nomination, National Park Service
7. March 20, 1975

   The large trees in front of the old Federal Building on Fulton Street were uprooted to make way for the new United Nations Plaza.

   San Francisco City Planning Commission minutes, San Francisco Public Library (Internet Archive)
8. April 5, 1977

   The Section 504 sit-in began here: more than a hundred disability-rights activists occupied the regional offices of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare for nearly a month, the longest occupation of a federal building in the country's history, until Secretary Joseph Califano signed the Section 504 regulations and they left on 30 April.

   National Register of Historic Places nomination, National Park Service
9. 1982

   Built.

10. May 1982

    Permit 8203640 $$$ $145,000

    Building use: offices.

11. Jul 1982

    Permit 8205878 $$$ $678,120

    Building use: office/com./bank.

12. 1985

    On 27 October 1985 people living with AIDS chained themselves to this federal building's doors, where the regional Health and Human Services office sat - reckoned the earliest act of civil disobedience over the epidemic anywhere. The vigil that grew from it held the lawn outside day and night for ten years, and placards of the dead taped to these walls gave rise to the idea of the AIDS Memorial Quilt.

    Donna J. Graves and Shayne E. Watson, Citywide Historic Context Statement for LGBTQ History in San Francisco, San Francisco Planning Department, adopted by the Historic Preservation Commission November 18, 2015
13. Sep 1987

    Permit 8712785 $$$ $140,000

    Tenant improvement/create 26 separate offices.

14. May 1988

    Permit 8806747 $$$ $150,000

    Tenant improvement @ portion of 3rd & 5th floors.

15. Mar 1999

    Permit 9905602 $$$ $149,674

    Oti-1 2/d el me ls.

16. Apr 1999

    Permit 9908325 $$$ $23,000

    Oti-1 3rd floor, el, me, l/s.

17. Mar 2000

    Permit 200003305862 $$$ $220,000

    Oti-1 5/f el me ls.

18. Sep 2008

    Permit 200809302977 $$$ $1,200,000

    Tenant improvment 6th floor of e low rise office building. tenant is an adult educational school (b occupancy) with classrooms and instructional food facilities. project will provide acessible toilet facilities. all classroom occupants above 12th grade. life safety sep permit.

19. Jan 2009

    Permit 200901069582 $$$ $450,000

    5th floor tenant improvement of an existing low-rise office building of about 10, 500 usable sq ft. the tenant is an adult educational school with classrooms & office space for facility. additional accessible toilet facilities are being provided. sprinkler/life safety will be submitted under separate permit.

20. Apr 2009

    Permit 200904136135 $$$ $400,000

    Tenant improvement 1st floor of an existing low-rise office building of 4703 usable sq feet. tenant is an adult educational school (b occupancy) with classrooms & storage. additional accessible toilet facilities are being provided. sprinkler will not be provided. life safety will be submitted under seperate.

21. Apr 2010

    Permit 201004059665 $$$ $615,000

    United nations plaza. tenant improvement ( approx. 7, 741 sq ft). selective demolition of existing interior wall and new construction of class rooms, open office and restrooms. no sturtural work. no exterior work.

22. 2013

    Reopened late in the year as the General Services Administration's Pacific Rim regional headquarters after its first renovation since it was built: HKS designed it and Hathaway Dinwiddie built it, with a seismic upgrade on a new foundation, a standing-seam zinc roof in place of the original lead-coated copper, and a new courtyard by Cliff Lowe Associates with the artist Cliff Garten.

    National Register of Historic Places nomination, National Park Service
23. June 8, 2017

    Listed individually on the National Register of Historic Places, at the state level, as a federal building of the Public Buildings Act designed by a private architect and as an outstanding late Beaux Arts work of Arthur Brown Jr.; it was already a contributor to the Civic Center district.

    National Register of Historic Places nomination, National Park Service
24. Oct 2018

    Permit 201810223786 $$$ $48,000

    2nd & 3rd floor - demolition of interior non bearing walls per ab-017.

25. Feb 2019

    Issued Permit 201902042039 $$$ $90,000

    Add new single story elevator access from existing 6th fl to roof level and adding new roof deck with trellis.

26. Jul 2019

    Issued Permit 201907115580 $$$ $150,000

    Ref permit application 201904107633, 200903244753; nfpa 13 fire sprinklers system installation ground fl. - 4th fl.

27. Sep 2020

    Issued Permit 202009124049 $$$ $155,675

    2nd & 5th fl: tenant improvement. add few non-bearing walls, general clean up of finishes, add a new kitchnette at 2nd fl.

28. Jul 2021

    Suspended Permit 202107224915 $$$ $50,000

    Outdoor vrf units for core project originally installed in late 2019. outdoor air fan was also installed during this time. this project installs the indoor vrf fan coils, branch controller, refrigerator piping & ductwork for t.i. project. reference permit application 202105059849.

29. May 2022

    Filed Permit 202205184490 $$$ $1,896,195

    2/f spec suite: t.i. & infrastucture upgrades on roof & mechanical rooms on each floor.

30. May 2022

    Suspended Permit 202205184492 $$$ $1,867,147

    Ground floor: tenant improvement. roof: infrastructure upgrades. new mechanical on rooftop.

31. May 2022

    Filed Permit 202205244903 $$$ $2,027,534

    3rd floor spec suite: tenant improvement. roof: infrastructure upgrades and mechanical rooms on each floor.

DBI holds 143 permits for this parcel, most of them tenant improvements on individual floors. The timeline shows the 24 largest by stated cost, plus the earliest on file; the DBI query in the sources below returns all 143. 3 of them are nominal $1 street-space or sidewalk permits. 5 expired or cancelled permits are not shown. The assessor's roll gives 1982; the building was completed in 1936.