Coit Tower

Coit Tower stands at the top of Telegraph Hill at 1 Telegraph Hill Boulevard in San Francisco, an Art Deco concrete tower completed in 1933. It was funded by a bequest from Lillie Hitchcock Coit, a wealthy San Francisco resident known for her devotion to the city's volunteer firefighters, who left money to beautify the city. The 210-foot fluted tower was designed by architects Arthur Brown Jr. and Henry Howard and sits within Pioneer Park. Its lobby holds a celebrated set of fresco murals painted in 1934 by about 26 artists under the Public Works of Art Project, an early New Deal program during the Great Depression. The murals, many in the Social Realist style influenced by Diego Rivera, depict California industry, agriculture, city life and labor, and some caused controversy for their political content. Visitors view the murals in the ground-floor lobby, where they cover the walls and ceiling, and a spiral stair leads to additional murals. An elevator ride to the observation deck, about $10 (USD), offers views of the bay, the Bay Bridge, Alcatraz, and the downtown skyline. The murals have been conserved by city preservation programs, and the lobby is free to enter. The tower is open daily at roughly 10:00 AM to 6:00 PM; confirm on sfrecpark.org. The approach is steep, via the Greenwich or Filbert Steps, a scenic stair walk through gardens on the hillside, where wild parrots are often heard. A visit takes about 45 to 90 minutes. Parking at the summit is very limited, so many visitors arrive on foot or by Muni bus, which stops nearby. The tower's design, with its slender fluted shaft rising above the hilltop, makes it a landmark visible from much of the city, and the lobby murals are widely regarded as among the most significant public-art survivals of the New Deal in California, with guided tours of the upper-level murals offered at set times.