San Francisco's Coit Tower beckons with views, murals and quirky history

SAN FRANCISCO — "One more. Squeeze in, one more," chanted the elevator's operator as almost a dozen tourists squished into the old-fashioned elevator for the slow, clanking ascent up Coit Tower.

At the top of the 210-foot-tall tower, we spilled out onto a viewing platform for a jaw-dropping panorama of San Francisco, from downtown high-rises and streets of pastel-painted Victorian houses to Golden Gate Bridge and steep headlands, all burnished by the setting sun.

Golden Gate has become San Francisco's icon, known worldwide. But if city symbols were ever up for vote, I'd go for Coit Tower. It embodies almost everything that characterizes San Francisco, from gorgeous views and a colorful, quirky history to left-wing politics. And it makes an excellent destination for a walk, in this most walkable of American cities, if you don't mind puffing up some steep stairs to get there.

Thanks to Miss Lil

Coit Tower, which sits atop the narrow Telegraph Hill in northeast San Francisco, was built in 1933, and commemorates one of San Francisco's more eccentric citizens, Lillie Hitchcock Coit, and the city's fire department.

Miss Lil, as she was known, had a thing for San Francisco fire engines and the volunteer firemen who manned them. In her day — she was born in 1843 — firemen hauled their fire engines by hand up the city's steep hills.

Legend has it that a teenage Lillie was walking home from school one afternoon and came across the short-handed firemen of the Knickerbocker Engine Co. No. 5 struggling to haul their engine up Telegraph Hill to a fire. She raced to help, pulling on the tow rope and exhorting bystanders to pitch in. They did, and Engine Co. No. 5 surged up the hill, ahead of other engines, to put out the fire.

Miss Lil became a lifelong fan and mascot of No. 5, visiting with the firemen, following fire engines through the streets, and wearing an honorary bejeweled fireman's badge until her death in 1929 at age 86.

It wasn't only chasing fire engines that made her one of San Francisco's more eccentric characters. She married into money, but scandalized proper society by wearing men's pants, smoking cigars, playing poker with firemen and frequenting saloons.

Later she roamed the world and settled in Paris, but left her heart and part of her fortune in San Francisco, bequeathing money to the city to beautify it with a memorial.

The city decided on Coit Tower, building the white concrete tower on 300-foot-tall Telegraph Hill. To many, the tower resembles the nozzle of an old-fashioned fire hose (although the original architects said that wasn't their intent), recalling Miss Lil's fondness for the fire engines and firemen.

Views and murals

For visitors to Coit Tower, the 360-degree view is the big draw. On my November visit, I joined dozens of tourists huddling against the winter wind at the top of the open-roofed tower. Arched windows gave us bird's-eye view of the city and San Francisco Bay, from the fog creeping toward Golden Gate Bridge and the setting sun glinting off the downtown high-rises to Oakland and Berkeley east across the bay.

Yet what's inside Coit Tower is as compelling as the views. The ground-floor lobby is ringed by dozens of striking, 10-foot-tall murals. Painted by 26 artists in a socialist-realist style and completed in 1934, they portray California life during the Depression years. They're a somber window on working life, depicting everything from meat-packing plants to railroads and San Francisco street scenes to farming.

To some San Franciscans, the murals, painted under the Federal Public Works program, were too subversive and too left-wing, with their veiled references to Marxism and social protest, and the initial opening of the tower was delayed for several months.

These days, politics still swirl around Coit Tower. Conservative talk-show host Bill O'Reilly blasted San Francisco in the fall for its vote to discourage military recruiting in high schools, saying al-Qaida should just blow up Coit Tower and that no one else in America would care. That brought a flurry of protests from city officials, and some San Franciscans headed to the steps of Coit Tower with placards protesting O'Reilley's statements.

A beacon for walkers

Despite the colorful past and politics, Coit Tower remains a peaceful place and an excellent destination for a city walk, a beacon I liked so much that I walked to it twice during a weekend visit to San Francisco.

Setting off from my hotel near downtown's Union Square for the half-hour walk, I meandered north through Chinatown along Grant Street, past souvenir shops, bakeries and restaurants on sidewalks so crowded that it was sometimes easier to walk in the street.

Continuing to North Beach, the once rough-and-tumble Italian neighborhood at the foot of Telegraph Hill, I stopped at Cafe Trieste, an old-style coffee bar. A double shot of excellent espresso fueled me for the walk up Kearny Street, on the south side of the hill. The street, lined with bay-windowed houses with million-dollar views, dead-ended on the south side of Telegraph Hill. Steep stairs continued up to the tower, winding through eucalyptus trees whose pungent scent perfumed the air.

Finally reaching Coit Tower, I drank in its views, murals and stark architecture — and admired the eccentric Miss Lil who was behind it all.

Kristin Jackson: kjackson@seattletimes.com or 206-464-2271.