The Sound Column is gone, but the Tactile Dome will live on. Since 1969, visits to the Exploratorium — the hands-on museum of experience at the Palace of Fine Arts — have been a rite of passage for schoolchildren in San Francisco and the greater Bay Area. That ended Wednesday, as more than 5,000 visitors hummed, whirred, buzzed and discovered their way through the museum’s 450 exhibits before the site shut its doors forever at 5 p.m. Read More

In 2002, you could have called it a building destined to never happen. But you wouldn’t have known it Wednesday when public officials held a topping-out ceremony to hail the approaching completion of an office building they called The City’s greenest, the future home of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission. Read More

Following January’s temporary closure of a parking lot shared by the Exploratorium and the Palace of Fine Arts, San Francisco hoped to construct 23 new parking spots on a triangular plot of land at Palace Drive and Lyon Street. But neighbors of the 9,000-square-foot space were protective of the once-wooded lot. Demanding that The City keep the land as is, they showed up to public meetings and replanted trees where pavement was about to go down. Read More

Melissa Alexander, the director of public programs for the Exploratorium, discusses fear, the theme of next month’s “After Dark” program. The event will take place Nov. 4. Read More