[1] He and his family emigrated to the United States in 1910 and settled in San Francisco's South of Market neighborhood, then known as "Greektown", when Christopher was two years old.

[1] During his administration, San Francisco hosted the 1956 Republican National Convention at the Cow Palace, in which the party renominated incumbent president Dwight D. Eisenhower as its candidate in the upcoming presidential election.

His administration has been credited with the building of the Brooks Hall, 12 new schools, 17 firehouses, six public swimming pools, the five-story Fifth and Mission and the underground Civic Center garages.

Christopher presided over the redevelopment of major portions of city and private lands, labeled slums, some not without controversy as the Embarcadero Center and Golden Gateway, displacing the old wholesale produce market from the filled land southeast of Telegraph Hill to the Alemany location where it remains Japantown and the Fillmore urban renewal that displaced the African-American and the remnants of the Jewish Community for concrete high rises, the new Hall of Justice and the opening of the Embarcadero Freeway, which blocked the Embarcadero and Ferry Building from the city, spawning the first Freeway Revolt.

A large group of students and active citizens were fire-hosed down the marble steps inside City Hall rotunda by the San Francisco Police Department when they protested their exclusion from admission to committee hearings.

He lost the June 8, 1966, Republican primary for Governor of California to motion picture and television actor (and future conservative icon and President) Ronald Reagan, who won with 77 percent of the vote.