Coit Tower

Coit Tower is one of those city-defining buildings that has a history as interesting as its architecture. I’ve been up there only a couple times but each time I go I get a pretty sublime feeling from the view. But the tower is itself an odd piece – it almost seems as if it is a monument to the city’s conservative side. Its history tells me these feelings are true.

For instance, the building’s appearance has some hard right leaning connotations. The style is reminiscent of art-deco nazi architecture and even has fasces on the front. The tower’s benefactor, Lillie Hitchcock Coit, was a wealthy woman whose father made his fortune as an army doctor at west point. She married a prominent figure on the San Francisco stock exchange and basically embodies the plutocrats who made the city rich and Coit tower is a monument to their power.

But even though Lillie Coit came from wealth and married rich, she always had a soft spot for the city’s firefighters and did her every best effort to join them whenever there was a fire nearby. In fact, the tower seems to resemble a fire hose (although this is by coincidence according to historians) and bears the city’s infamous phoenix on the front. Is it an allusion to the great 1906 earthquake and coinciding fire? Or is it merely the usage of San Francisco’s phoenix from the city flag? It’s interesting to think about its connotations with the fasces (albeit axe-less fasces) and the nature of the building itself.

Speaking of the flag, I saw many American flags near Coit tower but can’t say I spotted any San Franciscan ones…