Comprising three exhibition halls alongside the Yerba Buena Gardens, the Moscone Center is the largest convention complex in San Francisco. It hosts a variety of big name events, conferences and exhibits, and is surrounded by some of the city’s most outstanding museums, including the Museum of the African Diaspora, the Children’s Creativity Museum and the Contemporary Jewish Museum.
Moscone South, located below the Yerba Buena Gardens, was the first to be built in the SoMa area and famously hosted the 1984 convention of the Democratic Party of the United States. In 1992 Moscone North was added across Howard Street, followed by the three-level Moscone West across 4th Street in 2003, both of which were designed by Gensler. Over the years, the Moscone Center has hosted conferences by big-name businesses such as Apple, Google and Microsoft and is set to undergo another expansion in 2018. In line with San Francisco’s sustainable ethos, the roof of the Moscone Center was fitted with an immense solar electricity system in 2004 as part of the city’s bid to obtain all municipal energy from pollution-free sources, and it forms part of the largest city-owned solar installation in the United States.
The Moscone Center is easily accessed along the BART and MUNI metro systems, with Montgomery Station the closest for Moscone North and South and Powell Station best for Moscone West. Alternatively, it’s a short streetcar ride down Market Street from the Embarcadero Ferry Building to Third Street and just a couple of blocks walk from there.
Construction on the Moscone Center’s southern hall began in 1981 by architects Hellmuth, Obata & Kassabaum and was named for the San Francisco Mayor George Moscone who was assassinated three years previously. He had opposed the area being developed and had campaigned against it, with a belief it would displace many of the elderly and poor who lived there.