Greg Bayol’s favorite part of taking visitors around San Francisco City Hall is seeing the supervisors’ legislative chamber. The ceiling might look like carved wood, he says, but it’s painted plaster.
Today’s tour group — a man visiting from Dublin (in the East Bay, not Ireland), a young couple who just moved here from Seattle, and this reporter — admire the deception.
The wood paneling on the legislative chamber walls is real though, Bayol says. It’s Manchurian oak, softer and easier to carve than the oak species native to the state, shipped over from now-extinct forests in Asia. The curtains in the legislative chamber remain drawn at all times to keep the wood panels from bleaching.
The chamber’s doorknobs are crowned with bronze artichokes, a species native to the Mediterranean, not California, but symbolic of hopes, dreams and good times.
The supervisors, still enjoying the last stretch of summer recess, are absent. The flowers in the chamber are withering. Outside, the grand staircase leading up to the chamber is, as always, occupied by newlyweds and quinceañera photo shoots. The dresses are stunning and puffy.
Greg Bayol showing tourists around the Board of Supervisors’ legislative chamber. Photo by Xueer Lu. Aug. 15, 2025. 
The 11 supervisors were on summer recess and the legislative chamber was empty. Photo by Xueer Lu. Aug. 15, 2025. 
The chamber’s doorknobs are crowned with bronze artichokes. Photo by Xueer Lu. Aug. 22, 2025. 
The ceiling of the Board of Supervisors’ legislative chamber is made of plaster, Greg Bayol explained. Photo by Xueer Lu. Aug. 15, 2025. 
Doors remain closed at the Board of Supervisors’ legislative chamber and the 11 supervisors are set to return on Sept. 2. Photo by Xueer Lu. Aug. 22, 2025. 
Room 200, the Mayor’s Office, sits across the building from the Board of Supervisors’ legislative chamber. Photo by Xueer Lu. Aug. 22, 2025.
The grand staircase, Bayol says, was originally designed to lead up to the mayor’s office, across from the Board of Supervisors’ legislative chamber. The board voted to change the design of the staircase so that a person walking into City Hall through the main entrance would be greeted by the full length of the grand staircase, instead of a side profile.
The rotunda around the staircase, Bayol adds, is 307 feet tall. That’s 19 feet taller than the dome of the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C. You could fit the Statue of Liberty (305 ft.) inside, if you could get her through the doors.
The carvings on the rotunda’s dome are dahlias, San Francisco’s city flower. They represent the deep roots the city has with Mexico and Central America, where the species originates, says Bayol.
The architect who designed City Hall in 1912, Arthur Brown Jr., studied in Paris. Brown won the job of designing the building in a competition against other architects, all local. Brown had already designed Berkeley’s City Hall and would go on to also design the War Memorial Opera House, across the street from San Francisco City Hall.
On each side of the rotunda, soft light pours through the glass skylights covering the South and North Light Court.
It wasn’t always this way, Bayol says. These skylights were once a pigeon patio. In the 1950s, the city’s Department of Public Works decided it’d had enough of going up on the roof and scrubbing pigeon poop off the skylights, and simply decided to cover the roof up.
A renovation after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake uncovered the skylights for the first time in decades. And, naturally, the pigeons returned. This time, the city brought in peregrine falcons to keep the pigeons in check.
Bayol, 77 and retired from the state transportation department, leads this tour as a volunteer docent every Friday morning; on Saturdays, he answers questions from visitors at the California Academy of Sciences. There, he says, the questions are better.
At City Hall, the most frequent question posed by tour groups is, “Where is the bathroom?”
At Cal Academy, visitors often point to Claude, the resident albino alligator (he turns 30 in September), to ask if he’s dead or made of plastic.
Despite the lack of albino alligators, Bayol likes City Hall, too. His fondest memory here, he says, is not tour-related. He remembers coming here 20 years ago, long before he became a docent, on Feb. 12, 2004. That’s when then-Mayor Gavin Newsom and other city officials opened up City Hall for same-sex marriages.
“It was such a joyous time,” Bayol said. “Everybody was happy and having a good time … It is what the city of San Francisco is, and what it stands for.”
I think he was one of the PIOs for Caltrans District 4. I worked with James Lee and Barry Young? Can’t remember, memory fuzzy after 30 plus years, but all good people.
Thanks for the lovely tour. I lived in the city 30 years (30 years ago). My last visit to City Hall was for the funeral of Mascone & Milk… Such a sad time for all of us.
“The chamber’s doorknobs are crowned with bronze artichokes” Artichokes?! I’ll admit I have not looked closely at the doorknobs; but I believe Mr. Bayol may be referring to the Acanthus, which is a common motif in neo-classical architecture like SF City Hall; and, if you didn’t know otherwise, you might think it was an artichoke.
Where and how do we take the tour offered by Greg Bayol of SF City Hall and his other tours?