page_title: San Jose City Hall
section_title: Events
hierarchical_section_title: San Jose City Hall / Events
caption_attribution_description: At San Jose City Hall
context_page_description: San José City Hall is the seat of the municipal government of San Jose, California. Located in Downtown San Jose, it was designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Richard Meier in a Postmodern style. It consists of an 18-story tower, an iconic glass rotunda, and a city council chamber wing, laid out within a two-block-long public square known as San José Civic Plaza. The tower rises 285 feet above the plaza, making it the second tallest building in San Jose.
  San Jose has had six seats of government in its history. City officials met in Downtown San Jose from before the city's incorporation in 1850 until the 1950s, when a modern City Hall was built at Civic Center to the north. The current City Hall's construction capped a period of rapid growth for the city during the dot-com bubble. Its opening in 2005 marked the municipal government's return downtown after half a century in an office park setting.
context_section_description: The front plaza facing East Santa Clara Street was designed as a public square. It regularly attracts political demonstrations. In 2007 and 2008, it was the site of protests and a hunger strike by Lý Tống regarding city council's initial refusal to name the city's main Vietnamese business district Little Saigon. Local versions of national rallies have been held at City Hall, including an immigration reform protest in 2006; Occupy San José in 2011; Not My Presidents Day, the Tax March, the March for Science, and the Women's March in 2017; March for Our Lives and Families Belong Together in 2018; and the George Floyd protest in 2020. The previous city hall also attracted political demonstrations, including marches following the police shooting deaths of John Henry Smith in 1971 and Bich Cau Thi Tran in 2003.
  Civic Plaza attracts relatively little foot traffic apart from organized events, owing in part to heat reflecting off City Hall and a lack of shade. However, temporary art installations occasionally attract crowds from the busier parts of downtown. A light art installation titled "Sonic Runway" was located in the front plaza from November 3, 2017, to March 9, 2018, as part of the Playa to the Paseo partnership between the city and the Burning Man project.
  An automated lighting system was installed in the rotunda in June 2017, enabling the tower and rotunda to be colorfully lit to mark special occasions.
caption: 2017 San Jose Women's March
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