George Christopher

George Christopher (born George Christopheles; December 8, 1907 – September 14, 2000) was a Greek-American politician who served as the 34th mayor of San Francisco from 1956 to 1964. To date, he is the most recent Republican to be elected mayor of San Francisco.

Early years Born George Christopheles in Arcadia, Greece, the son of James and Mary (née Koines) Christopheles.

San Francisco City Government Regarded as a moderate Republican, Christopher was instrumental in bringing the New York Giants baseball team to San Francisco in 1958 (where they became the San Francisco Giants) and securing the funding to build Candlestick Park on the abandoned lands of Sunset Scavenger on Candlestick Point with the ballpark opening for the Giants’ 1960 season. 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 was known for his strong stand on civil rights. He gained worldwide headlines offering his home to Willie Mays after it was reported that a Forest Hill realtor had refused to sell to Mays. Christopher also lobbied and succeeded in opening mental health and alcohol treatment centers under city funding.

In 1958, Christopher served as the president of the National League of Cities.

Christopher presided over the redevelopment of major portions of city and private lands, labeled slums, some not without controversy, such 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 community 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. In Christopher's second term, the House Subcommittee on Un-American Activities held hearings in the City Hall supervisor's chambers. 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. Christopher later told the Federal Government they were no longer welcome in city buildings, but he sided with the committee and spoke for the propaganda newsreel-style film made by the committee about the event, titled Operation Abolition, that blamed Communists for the so-called City Hall riot of May 13, 1960. Christopher was criticized for endorsing the film while saying that "at least 90% of the students were not organized by the Communists." Historian Geoffrey Kabaservice points out that a Drew Pearson column that highlighted a 1940 arrest of Christopher for buying and selling underpriced milk, a story fed to Pearson by the staff of incumbent governor Pat Brown, and Christopher's underwhelming response to that column contributed to the loss.