Bakewell & Brown designed the building, with Arthur Brown Jr. as principal architect, to replace the 1899 City Hall destroyed in the 1906 earthquake. Groundbreaking was on April 5, 1913, the mayor moved in on December 28, 1915, and construction officially ended on July 28, 1916. The style is Beaux-Arts, and the dome draws on Mansart's Baroque domes in Paris. The exterior is Madera County granite over 7,900 tons of structural steel.
The dome is 112 feet (34 m) across, and the building's height to the spire is 307.5 feet (93.73 m). The 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake twisted the dome about four inches. A base-isolation upgrade reopened it in January 1999.
The city owns it, and the upper levels of the Rotunda are public. It was designated a San Francisco Landmark in 1970.
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