Coit Tower Summit and WPA Murals: The Maritime Flute of the Bay

Why is it significant?

Stand atop the wind-swept crest of Telegraph Hill beneath the soaring fluted concrete column of Coit Tower, rising two hundred ten feet into the maritime air.

Key Facts

Open the walk

Stand atop the wind-swept crest of Telegraph Hill beneath the soaring fluted concrete column of Coit Tower, rising two hundred ten feet into the maritime air. Completed in 1933, the Art Deco tower was funded by a bequest from wealthy, eccentric socialite Lillie Hitchcock Coit, who was made an honorary member of Knickerbocker Engine Company Number Five as a teenager and loved the city's brave volunteer firemen. Designed by architects Arthur Brown Jr. and Henry Howard, the unadorned cylindrical shaft provides an unparalleled three-hundred-sixty-degree panorama spanning Alcatraz, the Golden Gate Bridge, and the downtown financial canyon.

Step inside the ground-floor rotunda to behold one of the greatest treasures of American public art: the 1934 Public Works of Art Project fresco murals. Twenty-five master artists and numerous assistants were commissioned under President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal to paint authentic scenes of California life during the Great Depression. Painted directly into wet lime plaster in the social realist style of Mexican muralist Diego Rivera, the frescoes depict stevedores loading ships, farmworkers picking fruit, and streetcars rumbling past city newsstands.

The murals provoked fierce controversy upon completion. Artists Bernard Zakheim, Victor Arnautoff, and John Langley Howard included left-wing newspapers, communist symbols, and striking workers, leading city officials to padlock the tower doors for months before public outcry forced their reopening. Every stone lintel, narrow garden path, and surrounding hillside viewpoint bears eloquent witness to the colorful personalities and grassroots struggles that shaped this legendary neighborhood across more than a century. Every stone lintel, narrow garden path, and surrounding hillside viewpoint bears eloquent witness to the colorful personalities and grassroots struggles that shaped this legendary neighborhood across more than a century.

Telegraph Hill itself served in 1849 as the site of a two-armed marine semaphore that signaled the arrival of sailing ships through the Golden Gate to merchants waiting below.

Walk to the eastern crest of the summit and locate the historic wooden handrails marking the descent down the Filbert Street Steps.