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Published: September 21st 2014
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Every city needs its own personal phallic symbol, and Coit Tower at the apex of Telegraph Hill fills that spot nicely for San Francisco. The tower was named for Lillian Coit, a wealthy, and rather eccentric, woman who had great respect for the firefighters of the city of San Francisco. She died in 1929, leaving a big chunk of money to the city “for the purpose of adding to the beauty of the city I have always loved.” The money was used to build Coit Tower as well as the nearby monument to San Francisco’s volunteer firefighters. Some say the tower was built in the shape of a fire hose nozzle, others say that’s nonsense. I’ll let you be the judge.
The best part of Coit Tower, however has little to do with the shape of the building, nor is it apparent from the outside. The curving walls on the inside of the building are covered with glorious murals painted during the Depression in 1934. The artists were commissioned by the Public Works of Art Project, a precursor to the Works Progress Administration, also known as the WPA. The WPA was begun in 1935 to provide jobs to unemployed men
and women during the Great Depression. The program built schools, libraries, post offices and parks, but also employed writers, musicians, and artists.
Twenty-seven different artists painted the murals which depict life in California during the Depression. The art has a decidedly Socialist bent, and is often compared to the style of Diego Rivera. In fact, when one of Rivera’s murals in Rockefeller Center was destroyed because it included a depiction of Lenin, the Coit Tower artists picketed, and included some not so subtle reference to the destruction.
Telegraph Hill is so named because in the early days of San Francisco, a lookout would be stationed at the top to watch for ships entering the harbor. Using a semaphore and a series of flags, the lookout let the rest of the city know the type of ship and cargo that was about to make port.
Today Telegraph Hill is primarily a quiet residential neighborhood, probably because residents and visitors are so out of breath after climbing the near vertical slopes that shouting and carrying on is just about impossible. There is a set of steep steps that lead down from Coit Tower to Levi’s Plaza by the waterfront.
The steps take you through some charming gardens and lovely homes that spill down the side of the hill. Please note that I said the stairs lead
down the hill; only a masochist would make the trek up the hill unless they absolutely had to. The Humphrey Bogart/Lauren Bacall movie “Dark Passage” gives you a feel for the stairs as you watch Humphrey Bogart struggle up the steps to collapse at Lauren Bacall’s doorstep. (It’s also a pretty good movie.)
The gardens around the Telegraph Hill steps are also reputed to be the home of a flock of wild parrots, though I didn’t see them. A documentary about the birds, “The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill” was made in 2007.
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D MJ Binkley
Dave and Merry Jo Binkley
San Francisco
So much to see and so little time