Brooks Hall

Brooks Hall lies directly beneath the grass of Civic Center Plaza. This vast underground space was constructed between nineteen fifty-six and nineteen fifty-eight to serve as San Francisco's primary convention center. Early critics and construction workers derisively nicknamed the subterranean project Mole Hall and Gopher Palace, names that were officially discarded when the city named the facility after retiring Chief Administrative Officer Thomas A. Brooks. The building is a massive ninety-thousand-square-foot concrete cavern that required the excavation of one hundred and forty thousand cubic yards of earth, during which crews constantly unearthed rubble from buildings destroyed in the nineteen-oh-six earthquake.