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Coit Tower

A tower paid for by a patron of firefighters and painted with Great Depression murals

Local name: Coit Tower

Collection: San Francisco · USA · Open in OpenStreetMap

Coit Tower on top of Telegraph Hill
Coit Tower on top of Telegraph Hill · Sasha • Stories, CC0, Wikimedia Commons

The story

Before you is Coit Tower on Telegraph Hill. It is 210 feet tall. The money for it came from Lillie Hitchcock Coit. In 1858, as a girl, she reportedly helped a fire company haul its engine up this hill. From then on the firefighters called her their mascot, and later made her an honorary member. When she died in 1929, Lillie left a third of her fortune to the city for adding to its beauty. The architect Arthur Brown Jr. built the tower of unpainted concrete in the Art Deco style and dedicated it on the eighth of October 1933. People say it looks like a fire hose nozzle, but that is a coincidence. The real treasure is inside. In 1934 artists from the first New Deal program, which paid artists during the Great Depression, worked here. More than twenty of them covered the walls with frescoes about life in California. The work was supervised by Victor Arnautoff. He was born in Russia in 1896, fought in the White Army, and reached San Francisco by way of China. His fresco is called City Life. Find the newsstand in it: the man to its right is Arnautoff himself. In the summer of 1934, during the waterfront strike, the murals were attacked as communist, and the opening was put off. In 1963 Arnautoff moved to the Soviet Union, where he died in 1979. From the top you can see the whole bay, its bridges, and Alcatraz.

Visiting

Pioneer Park on top of Telegraph Hill, 1 Telegraph Hill Boulevard. The ground-floor murals are free to see during opening hours; the elevator to the observation deck has a fee. Hours are best checked at sfrecpark.org. The 39 Coit bus runs to the tower from Fisherman’s Wharf.

Photos

Victor Arnautoff’s fresco City Life, 1934
Victor Arnautoff’s fresco City Life, 1934 · Daderot, Public domain, Wikimedia Commons
Coit Tower in an old photograph from the 1930s
Coit Tower in an old photograph from the 1930s · Zan, Public domain, Wikimedia Commons

Sources

This text was written by AI from open sources. An expert will still check it. Found a mistake? Write to us. Support

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