It is faced with Madera County granite on the exterior, and Indiana sandstone within, together with finish marbles from Alabama, Colorado, Vermont, and Italy.

The medallions in the vaults of the Rotunda are of Equality, Liberty, Strength, Learning and, as memorialized in the South Light Court display, Progress.

[12]: 273, 315, 345  In 1852, San Francisco City Hall was at 750 Kearny Street between Washington and Merchant Streets,[14] at the converted Jenny Lind Theatre building and Parker House,[15] located then between the El Dorado Hotel and The Union, opposite the east side of Portsmouth Square.

[20] After Arthur Brown Junior's design was selected from the competition, construction started in 1913 and was completed by 1915, in time for the Exposition.

[17] Ground was broken for the 1916 City Hall at Van Ness and Fulton on April 5, 1913,[1][21] and the cornerstone was laid on October 25 of that year.

Afterward, under the leadership of the San Francisco Bureau of Architecture in collaboration with Carey & Co. preservation architects, and Forell/Elsesser Engineers, work was completed to render the building earthquake resistant through a base isolation system,[notes 1] which would likely prevent total collapse of the building.

City Hall reopened after its seismic upgrade in January 1999, and was the world's largest base-isolated structure at that time.

Prior to the 1960s there were extensive brick plazas, few trees, and a few large, simple, raised, and circular ponds with central fountains, all in a style that discouraged loitering.

At this time a central rectangular pond, with an extensive array of water vents (strangely, all in several strict rows and all pointing east, with identical arcs of water, and completely without sculptural embellishment), was added, with extensive groves of trees (again, in 60s modernist style, planted with absolute military precision on rectangular grids).

In the 1990s, with the rise of the problem of homelessness, the plaza was once again remodeled to make it somewhat less habitable—although the most significant change, the replacement of the pond and pumps with a lawn, could be reasonably justified on the basis of energy and water conservation.

[citation needed] The building features color changeable LED lighting at the outside of the Rotunda, and between the exterior columns.