BGuthrie Photos: CA -- San Francisco -- Coit Tower

CA -- San Francisco -- Coit Tower:

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Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
1. COIT_110727_014.JPG: Coit Tower This 210 foot monument was built in 1933 with monies bequeathed by Lillie Hitchcock Coit to beautify The City she loved. Frescoes were painted in the interior of the newly built structure by local artists funded through the United States Government's Public Works of Art Project. This plaque is placed by the Recreation and Park Commission, October 8, 1983 to mark Coit Tower's 50th Anniversary and its designation as an historic landmark.
2. COIT_110727_017.JPG: By bequest of Lillie Hitchcock Coit to the city she loved this tower is constructed by the park commissioners of San Francisco. MCMXXXIII
3. COIT_110727_048.JPG: Jose Moya del Pino Bay Scene The artist looks over the shoulder of Otis Oldfield as he sketches the view of the North Bay, including Alcatraz and Angel Islands.
4. COIT_110727_052.JPG: Rinaldo Cuneo Bay Area Hills Depicted in this pair of oil-on-canvas lunette paintings is, to the south of San Francisco (west wall), Santa Clara County's fruit orchards and farmlands (now Silicon Valley), and, to the east (east wall), the rounded brown hills of Contra Costa County.
5. COIT_110727_116.JPG: George Harris: Banking and Law: While the stocks continue to plunge and bags of money are guarded, lawyers pour over books in a law library. The artist's sense of humor is evident in the titles of books and the authors to whom he attributes the titles.
6. COIT_110727_152.JPG: Notice the guy getting robbed in front and the traffic accident in the back.
7. COIT_110727_176.JPG: Bernard Zakheim: Library: Joining the artist in the library and family and friends. The artist is reading a Hebrew book. Fellow artist John Langley Howard reaches for a Marx book, Ralph Stackpole learns about the destruction of the Rivera mural at Rockefeller Center in New York, and Beniamino Bufano reads about his proposed St. Francis statue.
8. COIT_110727_221.JPG: The Murals and Muralists of Coit Tower: In January 2008, Coit Memorial Tower was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Although the building is noted for its Art Deco design, the chief reason it received this national honor was for the twenty-seven murals that grace the rotunda and inner stairwell of the structure. When Coit Tower was completed in 1933, its interior consisted of over 3,000 square feet of blank wall space. But in early 1934, the building became the pilot project of the Public Works of Art Project (PWAP), an offshoot of the Civil Works Administration, one of the "alphabet soup" of federal agencies that put people to work during the Depression. One of the goals of the PWAP was "... to support professional artists and thereby create quality art." A committee headed by Dr. Walter Heil, director of the de Young Museum, selected the common theme, color palette, and sizing of the murals. Many of the most important Bay Area artists of the time were hired to create the artwork. The twenty-six project artists worked together to support the unified theme of "Aspects of Life in California, 1934," depicting scenes of agriculture, education, urban and rural life, and New deal idealism. Inspired by the 1920s public art movement in Mexico, the decision to use the medium of fresco for the murals was linked to artists such as Diego Rivera, with whom several of the Coit Tower muralists had worked. In fresco, the artist paints directly onto a wet plaster surface; and the colors dry, the picture becomes part of the wall and any changes must be chipped out. The muralists earned an average of $31,22 per week, completing the project in six months' time. In the 1930s, the American art scene was divided into two distinct schools: Regionalism, which glorified rural America, and Social Realism, which offered a more critical and urban view of American society. This political and idealistic split within American art is clearly represented in the body of work inside Coit Tower. Before the Tower opened to the public, during the politically charged atmosphere of the 1934 Maritime Strike, several murals were negatively described in the press as depicting Communist symbols. Eventually one of the controversial pieces was removed, and the building finally opened to the public in With some murals restored in 1960 and others in 1975, the Coit Tower murals remain a definitive representation of the art of the Great Depression.
9. COIT_110727_251.JPG: William Hesthal: Railroad and Shipping: Seen here are the symbols of transportation commerce in the 1930s: trains and boats. On the left, a train prepares to depart while a signalman watches and waits. Behind the boat is the Third Street Bridge at China Basin, completed in 1933.
10. COIT_110727_268.JPG: John Langley Howard: California Industrial Scenes: In this mural, industry is physically portrayed, and with a powerful social and political message emerges from the mixture of visual images: demonstrating workers, the homeless, a strip mining operation, and Shasta Dam, to name a few.
11. COIT_110727_352.JPG: In 1876, a group of San Francisco citizens purchased four lots at the crest of Telegraph Hill and bequeathed the land to the city as a public park in memory of California's pioneers. We are the beneficiaries of their foresight and generosity....
12. COIT_110727_355.JPG: Coit Memorial Tower San Francisco's legendary Lillie Hitchcock Coit died in 1929, bequeathing one third of her estate "for the purpose of adding beauty to the city I have always loved." A committee comprised of Herbert Fleishhacker, John McLaren, William H. Crocker, James McSheehy, and CE Grunsky recommended that Arthur Brown, Jr. be retained to develop plans for a memorial on Telegraph Hill Coit Tower was built during the Great Depression and dedicated in 1933. The tower's famous murals were completed the following year. Pioneer Park
13. COIT_110727_358.JPG: In 1995, citizens organized once again to protect and improve Pioneer Park, over 700 volunteers and donors contributed to the addition of the new stairs, paths, and terraces which were completed in 2001 by the city and county of San Francisco. Major donors included .... We extend our affection and gratitude to those who will, in the coming years, cherish and nurture this place.
14. COIT_110727_367.JPG: Big chunks of the mural have fallen off
15. COIT_110727_380.JPG: During Gold Rush days, a look-out stationed in a structure on this spot observed and signalled the arrival of incoming vessels, by adjusting movable arms high on a tall pole and by hoisting national colors, he indentified [sic] the nature of the ship arriving and alerted the town below. After four years, in 1853, this novel signalling system became obselete [sic] through use of electrical telegraph. This monument erected by California Historical Society July 20, 1961, on the occasion of the arrival of "S.S. Canberra" of the P&O Steam Navigation Company. Original plaque replaced by the Coit Tower Preservation Fund and rededicated January 31, 1993 on the arrival of "S.S. Canberra", world cruise 1993.
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Wikipedia Description: Coit Tower
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Coit Tower was built atop Telegraph Hill in 1933 at the bequest of Lillie Hitchcock Coit to beautify the City of San Francisco. Lillie bequeathed one-third of her estate to the City of San Francisco "to be expended in an appropriate manner for the purpose of adding to the beauty of the city which I have always loved."

Popular opinion is that the tower was designed to resemble a fire hose nozzle due to Lillie Hitchcock Coit's affinity with the San Francisco fire fighters of the day, in particular with Knickerbocker Engine Company Number 5. (Coit commissioned a separate tribute which still stands in nearby Washington Square Park on Columbus Street.) The designers denied this, a fact which is attributed to the Arts Commission meeting notes at the time of approval.

The art deco tower, 210 feet (64 meters) of unpainted reinforced concrete, was designed by architects Arthur Brown, Jr. and Henry Howard (of the architectural firm of Blakewell and Brown),

Murals:

A feature of the towers interior are murals by 26 different artists, including Victor Arnautoff, Bernard Zakheim, John Langley Howard , and Clifford Wight. Two of the murals are of San Francisco Bay scenes painted by Spanish artist Jos� Moya del Pi�o, who by then was a fulltime resident in the Bay Area. 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. These murals in particular contained very "leftist" political and social themes related to the Great Depression and socialist political movements. Most of the murals are open for public viewing without charge during open hours, although there are ongoing negotiations by the Recreation and Park ...More...
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Same Subject: Click on this link to see coverage of items having the same subject: [Park (Local)] [Structures]
2011 photos: Trips this year: Civil War Trust conferences (Savannah, GA, Chattanooga, TN), New Jersey over Memorial Day for my birthday (people never seem to visit New Jersey -- it's always just a pit stop on the way to New York. I thought I might as well spend a few days there. Despite some nice places, it still ended up a pit stop for me -- New York City was infinitely more interesting), my 6th consecutive San Diego Comic-Con trip (including Las Vegas, Los Angeles, and San Francisco). Ego strokes: Author photos that I took were used on two book jackets this year: Jason Emerson's book "The Dark Days of Abraham Lincoln's Widow As Revealed by Her Own Letters" and Dennis L. Noble's "The U.S. Coast Guard's War on Human Smuggling." I also had a photo of Jason Stelter published in the Washington Examiner and a picture of Miss DC, Ashley Boalch, published in the Washington Post. Equipment this year: I mostly used the Fuji S100fs camera as well as two Nikon models -- the D90 and the new D7000. Mostly a toy, I also purchased a Fuji Real 3-D W3 camera, to try out 3-D photographs. I found it interesting although I don't see any real use for 3-D stills now. Given that many of the photos from the 1860s were in 3-D (including some of the more famous Civil War shots), it's odd to see it coming back. Number of photos taken this year: just over 390,000.
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