Rising above you is Coit Tower, a concrete tower whose lobby murals caused a political scandal in 1934 and made it one of the most significant public art projects in American history. Coit Tower was built with a bequest from Lillie Hitchcock Coit, an eccentric San Francisco socialite who had been an honorary member of the Knickerbocker Engine Company No. 5 fire company since she was a teenager, and who left a third of her estate to beautify the city she loved. The 210-foot tower, designed by Arthur Brown Jr., was completed in 1933.
The Public Works of Art Project — a New Deal program — commissioned 26 artists to paint murals in the ground-floor lobby. The murals, depicting California workers, farmers, and labor organizers in a style influenced by the Mexican muralists Diego Rivera, caused immediate controversy. Conservative critics saw communist imagery in the workers' scenes, and the murals were briefly blocked from public view before being opened.
Today they are a landmark of American political art. But the tower is also a spectacular viewpoint: look north over the bay to Alcatraz, east to the Bay Bridge, and south across the rooftops of the city. The wild parrots of Telegraph Hill — a flock of cherry-headed conures that have lived here for decades — often circle the tower at dusk.