![]() The estate executors agreed to a monument on Telegraph Hill proposed by Art Commission President Herbert Fleishhacker. This idea received criticism from the estate’s trustees, who indicated a wish that the county finds ways and methods of expenditure of the funds on a monument that in itself would be an institution and not a piece of public development. The San Francisco County Board of Supervisors recommended using Coit’s gift to build a road near Lake Merced. The first was Coit Tower, and the second was a statue of three firemen, one of them was holding a woman in his arms. In her honor, two monuments have been created. In her will, she directed that one-third of her estate, $118,000, “be used in an acceptable manner for the objective of contributing to the beauty of the place which I have always cherished”. She usually accompanied the firefighters during street parades and festivities.Ĭoit was honored as an honorary fireman throughout her childhood and adulthood. Coit became the firefighters’ mascot after that, and her parents had to restrain her from leaping into duty at the ring of every fire bell. ![]() She saw them respond to a fire call up on the hill while they were short handed she tossed her school books aside and jumped in to help, shouting out to other people to help get the equipment up the hill to the flames. She developed a unique bond with the city’s firemen. ![]() The Coit Tower in San Francisco was funded by Coit’s inheritance four years after her death in 1929. ![]() She was an enthusiastic gambler who frequently dressed as a man to bet in the male-only clubs that line North Beach. Lillie Hitchcock Coit was one of the more unusual figures in North Beach, smoking cigars and wearing pants decades before it was culturally acceptable for women to do so. There was no city fire service prior to December 1866, and incidents in the city, which broke out on a regular basis in the wooden structures, were fought by many volunteer fire companies. It was the location of a two-floor observation platform in 1849, from which data about approaching ships were transmitted to city inhabitants through an optical semaphore device, which was succeeded in 1853 by an electrical telegraph, which would later be destroyed by a storm in 1870.Ĭoit Tower at Twilight, Telegraph Hill, San Francisco California (2015) GloriaDcolumnist, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia CommonsĬoit Tower was built using funds gifted by Lillie Hitchcock Coit, a rich aristocrat who enjoyed chasing fires in the city’s early days. Telegraph Hill has been praised as offering the best 360-degree view of San Francisco Bay. The architect commissioned the piece and had it cast as a part of the structure. Above the tower’s main entrance is a relief of a phoenix made of concrete by artist Robert Boardman Howard. It was erected in dedication to the volunteer firemen who perished in San Francisco’s five catastrophic fires and is also referred to as the Coit Memorial Tower. designed the Art Deco structure, which is made of unpainted reinforced concrete. ![]() Telegraph Hill, San Francisco, United StatesĪrthur Brown, Jr. 4.3 Why Did Some People Have an Issue With the Coit Tower Murals?.4.2 Why Was the Coit Tower in San Francisco Built?.4.1 What Is the Coit Tower in San Francisco Used For?.3.2 Censorship of the Coit Tower Murals. ![]()
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