Coit Tower

In front of you now rises one of the landmarks of the San Francisco’s skyline, the Coit Tower. If you want a 360° view of the surrounding area, you can climb up to the top of the tower, but the ticket isn’t cheap. This beautiful 64-meter-tall tower was built in 1933, fulfilling the wishes of Lillie Hitchcock Coit, to honor San Francisco’s firefighters. This lady was quite the character, and foremost the firefighters’ mascot. She wore pants, dressed up as a man to go gambling at the casino and smoked like a chimney. According to the story, at the age of 15, hearing a fire call on Telegraph Hill, she threw away her school books and rushed to help the volunteer firemen. From then on, she went out to lend a hand everytime the fire bell rang, took part in parades and today is considered the patron saint of the San Francisco firefighters. Upon her death, she left a rather hefty amount of money to the city, with the directive “to add beauty to the city I have always loved”. Contrary to popular belief, the building was not designed to look like a fire hose. The classic, reinforced-concrete tower follows the code of Art Deco style, and is completely covered with murals inside. These were created by 26 artists, on socio-political themes related to the Great Depression and social movements. The influence of Mexican muralist Diego Rivera is obvious. He and his wife, Frida Khalo, came to live in San Francisco in the 30s. Diego painted several frescoes that made a great impression on his colleagues. Not to mention the protest movement among artists after the destruction of Diego Rivera’s fresco, commissioned by the Rockefeller Center in New York. The artist added Lenin to his fresco in response to critics accusing him of anti-capitalist propaganda! Which, as you can imagine, did not go down well at all! In short, most of the paintings here are freely accessible, but there are plans to charge for entry to the tower, as well as for the access to its summit. And for fans of the great classics of the seventh art, you’ll find this tower in Alfred Hitchcock’s brilliant movie, Vertigo, and in many others. If you were wondering whether it has anything to do with Lillie Hitchcock Coit’s name, well no, it’s just a coincidence.