The Women's Building is a women-led non-profit arts and education community center located in San Francisco, California, United States, which advocates self-determination, gender equality and social justice. The building has served as an event and meeting space since 1979, when it was purchased by the San Francisco Women's Center. The building is shielded from rising real estate costs in the Mission district because that group has owned the building since 1995. The four-story building rents to multiple tenants and serves over 20,000 women a year.The structure was built in 1910 and was originally known as Turn Hall because it was part of the Turnverein exercise movement.Building historyThe San Francisco Women's Center began in 1973. By 1974, it hired its first full-time employee and had moved into a small storefront office. In 1976, its difficulty in locating a venue for the national conference on Violence Against Women it was organizing with other women's groups led it to search for a permanent space. Through 1978 and 1979, it raised funds to put down an initial $10,000 deposit, and then a $115,000 first payment towards the $535,000 purchase price of the building at 3543 18th Street.In the first year of operation, the Women's Building was targeted by two attacks: an arson fire that caused $50,000 worth of damage, and a pipe bomb set off on the front steps of the building.In 1997, the Women's Building underwent a major renovation prompted by mandatory seismic retrofitting. In the course of that effort, it evicted the Dovre Club, a bar that had been in the corner of the building on 18th and Lapidge Streets since 1979. The original owner of that bar had an oral agreement with the Women's Center that the bar could stay in place during his lifetime; after his death in 1997, the bar made an effort to stay in place but ultimately relocated.