{"nrhp_refnum":"05001112","name":"Veterans Affairs Medical Center-San Francisco, California","other_names":[],"category":"district","location":{"address":"4150 Clement St.","address_restricted":false,"city":"San Francisco","county":"San Francisco","state":"CA","lat":37.78425592000005,"lon":-122.50582455799002,"geom_source":"nps_gis"},"listed_date":"2009-04-20","is_nhl":false,"nhl_designated_date":null,"areas_of_significance":["Architecture","Politics/Government","Military","Health/Medicine"],"significance_levels":["national"],"summary":{"what_it_is":"A roughly 12-acre historic district within the 29-acre San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center campus at 4150 Clement Street, in the northwest corner of San Francisco. Most buildings were built in 1933-1934 in Art Deco style with Mayan-inspired terra cotta ornament.","why_significant":"The district preserves the core of the original 1934 veterans hospital campus, whose Art Deco design is enriched with Mayan-inspired terra cotta ornament. The complex was also an early government project designed with deliberate attention to earthquake hazard, using shear walls and tied terra cotta. The later campus areas outside the district were excluded because of lost integrity.","narrative":"Overlooking the Golden Gate and the Pacific from San Francisco's northwest corner, this historic district forms the original core of a veterans hospital campus on Clement Street. Covering about 12 acres of a 29-acre site, it contains buildings completed mainly in 1933-1934 in Art Deco style, decorated with terra cotta moldings drawing on Mayan motifs. Entrances, friezes and spandrel panels carry this ornament, and larger buildings have towers with stepped parapets. The complex was described in 1935 as one of the first government projects designed with careful attention to earthquake hazard, using interior concrete shear walls and terra cotta tied to the concrete structure. The district includes 14 contributing and 8 noncontributing resources, among them the administration building and the main hospital building, though many have been altered. Newer construction elsewhere on the campus reduced its historic character, so those areas lie outside the boundary. The campus remains an operating hospital beside Fort Miley.","period_of_significance":null,"architect_builder":null,"architectural_style":"Art Deco (Mayan-Deco)","criteria":[],"status_note":"Still in use as a hospital and health care campus; buildings now house administrative, clinical, research and engineering functions.","vacant_flag":false,"machine_generated":true,"model":"claude-sonnet-5-5","prompt_version":"v1.0-2026-10-29","generated_at":"2026-10-29 02:54:29.550282-05","source_pdf":"https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/lz/electronic-records/rg-079/NPS_CA/05001112.pdf"},"photo":{"url_800":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/05001112/ba86e623cd-800.webp","url_1600":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/05001112/ba86e623cd-1600.webp","licence":"CC BY-SA 3.0","author":"Sanfranman59","credit_html":"<a href=\"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:VA_Medical_Center_4150_Clement_St_San_Francisco_3-7-2010_2-24-31_PM.JPG\" rel=\"noopener\">Sanfranman59</a>, <a href=\"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0\" rel=\"license noopener\">CC BY-SA 3.0</a>, via Wikimedia Commons","source_page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:VA_Medical_Center_4150_Clement_St_San_Francisco_3-7-2010_2-24-31_PM.JPG"},"district":null,"sources":{"nps_snapshot_date":"2026-05-22","nara_catalog":"https://catalog.archives.gov/id/123861349","wikipedia":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_VA_Medical_Center","wikidata":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7414132"},"indexable":true,"url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/california/san-francisco/veterans-affairs-medical-center-san-francisco-california-05001112/"}