The only way to line up Coit Tower and the Transamerica Building nicely is from a helicopter.
One Telegraph Hill, San Francisco, California
Did you know there was a statue of Christopher Columbus in the Parking Lot?
COORDINATES:
37° 48′ 9″ N, 122° 24′ 21″ W
37.8025, -122.405833 |
Coit Tower
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia;
The
art deco tower, built of unpainted
reinforced concrete, was designed by architects
Arthur Brown, Jr. and
Henry Howard, with
frescomurals by 27 different on-site artists and their numerous assistants, plus two additional paintings installed after creation off-site. Although an apocryphal story claims that the tower was designed to resemble a fire hose nozzle
[3] due to Coit's affinity with the San Francisco firefighters of the day, the resemblance is coincidental.
Design
Brown's competition design envisioned a restaurant in the tower, which was changed to an exhibition area in the final version. The design uses three nesting concrete cylinders, the outermost a tapering fluted 180-foot (55 m) shaft that supports the viewing platform. An intermediate shaft contains a stairway, and an inner shaft houses the elevator. The observation deck is 32 feet (9.8 m) below the top, with an arcade and sylights above it. A rotunda at the base houses display space and a gift shop.
[4]
Murals
The Coit Tower murals were done under the auspices of the
Public Works of Art Project, the first of the New Deal federal employment programs for artists.
Ralph Stackpole and
Bernard Zakheim successfully sought the commission in 1933, and supervised the muralists, who were mainly faculty and students of the
California School of Fine Arts (CSFA), including Maxine Albro, Victor Arnautoff, Ray Bertrand,
Rinaldo Cuneo, Mallette Harold Dean, Clifford Wight, Edith Hamlin, George Harris, Otis Oldfield, Suzanne Scheuer, Hebe Daum and Frede Vidar.
[8]
After
Diego Rivera's
Man at the Crossroads mural was destroyed by its Rockefeller Center patrons for the inclusion of an image of Lenin, the Coit Tower muralists protested, picketing the tower. Sympathy for Rivera led some artists to incorporate
leftist ideas and composition elements in their works. Bernard Zakheim's "Library" depicts fellow artist John Langley Howard crumpling a newspaper in his left hand as he reaches for a shelved copy of Karl Marx's
Das Kapital with his right, and Stackpole is painted reading a newspaper headline announcing the destruction of Rivera's mural; Victor Arnautoff's "City Life" includes
The New Masses and
The Daily Worker periodicals in the scene's news stand rack; John Langley Howard's mural depicts an ethnically diverse Labor March as well as showing a destitute family panning for gold while a rich family observes; and Stackpole's
Industries of California was composed along the same lines as an early study of the destroyed
Man at the Crossroads.
[9]
Two of the murals are of
San Francisco Bay scenes. Most murals are done in
fresco; the exceptions are one mural done in
egg tempera (upstairs, in the last decorated room) and the works done in the elevator foyer, which are
oil on canvas. While most of the murals have been restored, a small segment (the spiral stairway exit to the observation platform) was not restored but durably painted over with
epoxy surfacing.
Most of the murals are open for public viewing without charge during open hours, although there are ongoing negotiations by the
Recreation and Parks Department of San Francisco to begin charging visitors a fee to enter the mural
rotunda. The murals in the spiral stairway, normally closed to the public, are open for viewing on Saturday mornings at 11:00 am with a free San Francisco City Guides tour.
[10]
Since 2004 artist
Ben Wood has collaborated with other artists on large scale video projections onto the exterior of Coit Tower, in 2004, 2006, 2008 & 2009.
[11]
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