Civic Center/UN Plaza station

Civic Center/UN Plaza station (often Civic Center station) is a combined BART and Muni Metro rapid transit station in the Market Street subway in downtown San Francisco. Located under Market Street between 7th Street and 8th Street, it is named for the Civic Center neighborhood and the adjacent United Nations Plaza. The three-level station has a large fare mezzanine level, with separate platform levels for Muni Metro and BART below. The station is served by the BART Red, Yellow, Green, and Blue lines, and the Muni Metro J Church, K Ingleside, L Taraval, M Ocean View, N Judah, and S Shuttle lines.

1. Station layout

Like the three other shared Muni/BART stations in the Market Street subway, Civic Center has three underground levels. The first level is a fare mezzanine, with two Muni paid areas and two BART paid areas. The second level has a single island platform for Muni Metro, and the third level has an island platform for BART. The station has six street entrances along its length, including one entrance in UN Plaza. The surface elevator is near the center of the station; the platform elevator is at the northeast end.

1. History

The BART Board approved the name "Civic Center" in December 1965. BART service at the station began on November 5, 1973, followed by Muni Metro service on February 18, 1980. In 2005, the station name was changed to Civic Center/UN Plaza during celebrations for the 60th anniversary of the United Nations and World Environment Day. Additional fare gates to allow direct connections between Muni and BART (without having to go up to the fare mezzanine) were also proposed. Construction of a bike station on the mezzanine level began in December 2014; it opened in August 2015.

A passageway formerly led to two additional entrances west of 8th Street and Hyde Street. One – on the north side of Market Street at Grove Street – was temporarily closed in December 2016 after a sewer pipe collapsed under the escalators. The entrance remained closed until it was permanently removed in October 2017. The remaining entrance west of 8th Street was permanently closed on November 1, 2018, as the passageway space was needed for a new electrical substation to add redundancy and capacity to support increased Transbay Tube train frequency. The six original entrances (all of which are significantly closer to the faregates) remained open. Following the 2015 addition of a canopy over an escalator at 19th Street Oakland station, which reduced escalator downtime by one-third, BART decided to add canopies to all downtown Oakland and San Francisco entrances. The canopies will protect the escalator from weather damage, improve lighting, allow the escalator to be fully closed off when the station is not open, and provide a location for real-time train arrival information displays. The Civic Center station entrance at Market and 7th was chosen for early implementation; it was closed on December 11, 2017, with the new canopy opened on October 9, 2018. The southern entrance at Market and 8th was closed on May 9, 2022, for canopy installation, and reopened on April 28, 2023. The 7th Street north entrance closed for canopy construction on April 29, 2024. All canopies are planned to be complete by 2027. The canopies at Civic Center station include artwork entitled "Dragonfly Wing" by Ron M. Saunders.

In May 2018, BART proposed to close off a corridor that connects the 7th Street and 8th Street sides of the station because it was frequently used for drug use. In February 2020, BART began a project to add two additional staircases to the BART platform. Construction was expected to take 12 months. The entrances on the southern side of the station were closed from April 13, 2020, to June 12, 2021, due to low ridership during the COVID-19 pandemic. Thirteen BART stations, including Civic Center, did not originally have faregates for passengers using the elevator. In 2020, BART started a project to add faregates to elevators at these stations. The new faregate at Civic Center was installed in January 2023. BART reopened a secondary station agent booth – which had been closed for over a decade – near the Civic Center entrance in February 2023. Replacement of the original BART fare gates with new units took place from July 18 to August 29, 2024.

1. Connections

Two Muni heritage streetcar stops are located above the station: Market and 7th Street, and Market and 8th Street (inbound) / Market and Hyde (outbound). Both are served by the F Market and Wharves line. The station is also served by a number of Muni bus and trolleybus routes:

Local: 5, 6, 7, 9, 19, 21 Rapid: 5R, 9R Express: 83X Owl service: J Bus, K Bus, K Owl, L Bus, L Owl, M Bus, N Owl, and N Bus Several Golden Gate Transit routes (24C, 30, 54C, 70, 92, 101, 101X) stop on 7th Street adjacent to the station. Additional Muni (14, 14R, 14X, 714) and SamTrans (FCXX, 292, 397, 398) bus routes run on Mission Street, one block away. AC Transit serves Civic Center station with the 800 All Nighter route during hours that BART is not operating. Under the planned Better Market Street project, stops on the F Market and Wharves line and bus routes would be consolidated to reduce travel times. The F stops at 7th and 8th streets would be replaced by a single midblock stop.

1. References


1. External links

BART: Civic Center / UN Plaza Station SFMTA: Civic Center Station inbound, outbound SF Bay Transit (unofficial): MUNI Metro Civic Center Station, Civic Center/UN Plaza BART Station

Nearby Places View Menu

United Nations Plaza (San Francisco)

United Nations Plaza (often abbreviated UN Plaza or UNP) is a 2.6-acre (1.1 ha) plaza located on the former alignments of Fulton and Leavenworth Streets—in the block bounded by Market, Hyde, McAllister, and 7th Street—in the Civic Center of San Francisco, California. It is located 1⁄4 mi (0.40 km) east of City Hall and is connected to it by the Fulton Mall and Civic Center Plaza. Public transit access is provided by the BART and Muni Metro stops at the Civic Center/UN Plaza station, which has a station entrance within the plaza itself. UN Plaza was designed by a joint venture of firms led by the noted architects Lawrence Halprin, John Carl Warnecke, and Mario Ciampi; Halprin designed the large sunken fountain. The plaza was dedicated in 1975 to commemorate the formation of the United Nations and the signing of the Charter of the United Nations on 26 June 1945 in San Francisco. Since its dedication, the plaza was refurbished in 1995 and 2005, and in Spring 2018, three redesign proposals were proposed for public review.

Landmark Plaza

50 United Nations Plaza Federal Office Building (San Francisco)

The 50 United Nations Plaza Federal Office Building is a United States federal building located on United Nations Plaza between Hyde and McAllister Streets in San Francisco, California. The 1936 Neoclassical style building, designed by Arthur Brown, Jr., is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and is a contributing property to the San Francisco Civic Center Historic District, which is a National Historic Landmark.

Government Landmark

Mid-Market, San Francisco

Mid-Market (also Central Market, and Market Street Theatre and Loft District) is a neighborhood, historic district and development area in San Francisco, California. The neighborhood is bounded by Market Street to the north, 5th Street to the east, Mission Street to the south, and Van Ness Avenue to the west. There are many theaters in the district, most of which began as vaudeville theaters, include the Warfield and Golden Gate. In 1906, Mid-Market was decimated by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, and over the next century, Mid-Market would rebuild itself. In the 21st century, Mid-Market has served as a major economic area for San Francisco. Mid-Market has contained the headquarters for Twitter, Block, Reddit, Zendesk, Uber, and Dolby, as well as historic buildings, such as the Old San Francisco Mint, the James R. Browning United States Courthouse, and the San Francisco Federal Building. Mid-Market is part of California's 11th congressional district, as of 2021. The "Market Street Theatre and Loft District" was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on April 10, 1986, for the architecture, and its events and commerce history; and is listed as a California Historical Landmark since 1986. It has twenty contributing buildings and covers 13.1 acres (5.3 ha).

Historic Site Landmark

Market Street Cinema

Market Street Cinema was a historical theater located on Market Street in the Mid-Market district, San Francisco, California. It was founded in 1912 by David and Sid Grauman as the Imperial Theater. It was converted into a movie theatre as the Premiere Theatre (1929) and the United Artists Theatre (1931). The benefit world premiere of Dirty Harry was held here on December 22, 1971. In 1972 it was purchased by adult film producer Mike Weldon (Skintight, 1979), and renamed Market Street Cinema and was used through the early 2000s as an adult entertainment venue. It was one of the first adult venues that allow "lap dancing," where the club's dancers would wander the crowd looking for tips by sitting on the laps of customers. Mike Weldon was sued by the Justice Department for "pimping," but repeatedly won the lawsuits given participants remained clothed during encounters, and the 'lap dances" were not "negotiated sex-acts." The role of the theater in San Francisco's sex industry in the 1980s was documented in a photo essay by photographer Leon Mostovoy. In October 2015, the San Francisco Planning Commission approved a plan to demolish the theatre and replace it with an eight-story building. Market Street Cinema is considered haunted in popular culture: it features in a 2013 episode of Ghost Adventures (season 7, episode 25) and was used as a shooting location by filmmaker Charles Webb for a low-budget horror movie called G-String Horror. On August 15, 2016, Mint Minx Press published the novella Market Street Cinema by author Michele Machado, narrating the fictional account of a dancer working at the club in 1998.

Landmark Movie Theater