Coit Tower

This guide to Coit Tower in San Francisco opens in October 1934, the day the tower was supposed to open to the public but instead sat padlocked behind police lines. Inside, twenty-two artists had spent months painting twenty-five Depression-era murals of California life, weeks after a bloody dockworkers strike below this hill. You'll hear what officials spotted on the walls, and why the artists refused to back down. It also traces the tower's origin to Lillie Hitchcock Coit, who at fifteen once dropped her schoolbooks to chase a passing fire engine up this hill.