Coit Tower, San Francisco; Its History and Art

San Francisco: Volcano Press, 1983. 50th Anniversary Edition: 1983-84 [from front cover]. Presumed first printing thus. Trade paperback. Very good. Don Beatty (Photographer). The format is approximately 5.5 inches by 8.5 inches. 136 Pages. Illustrations (many in color). Foreword by Tom Malloy. Appendix: The Artists. Notes. Bibliography. Ink notation from previous owner on first page. Masha Zakheim Jewett created a remarkable identity for herself. Energetic and expressive, she gave numerous talks and lectures on the art, architecture and history of San Francisco. Synonymous with Coit Tower, and a City Guide docent for many years, she was connected with the City Club, Beach Chalet, Stock Exchange, SF Art Institute and California Historical Society. She had a clear and enthusiastic, knowledgeable way of engaging with and drawing out her audience. The author was the daughter of Bernard Baruch Zakheim (April 4, 1898 - November 28, 1985) who was a Warsaw-born San Francisco muralist, best known for his work on the Coit Tower murals. Coit Tower is a 210-foot tower in the Telegraph Hill neighborhood of San Francisco, California, offering panoramic views over the city and the bay. The tower, in the city's Pioneer Park, was built between 1932 and 1933 using Lillie Hitchcock Coit's bequest to beautify the city of San Francisco. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places on January 29, 2008. The Art Deco tower, built of unpainted reinforced concrete, was designed by architects Arthur Brown, Jr. and Henry Temple Howard. The interior features fresco murals in the American fresco mural painting style, painted by 25 different onsite artists and their numerous assistants, plus two additional paintings installed after creation offsite. Also known as the Coit Memorial Tower, it was dedicated to the volunteer firemen who had died in San Francisco's five major fires. A concrete relief of a phoenix by sculptor Robert Boardman Howard is placed above the main entrance. It was commissioned by the architect and cast as part of the building. Although an apocryphal story claims that the tower was designed to resemble a fire hose nozzle due to Coit's affinity with the San Francisco firefighters of the day, the resemblance is coincidental. Telegraph Hill, the tower's location, has been described as "the most optimal 360 degree viewing point to the San Francisco Bay and five surrounding counties." In 1849, it became the site of a two-story observation deck, from which information about incoming ships was broadcast to city residents using an optical semaphore system, replaced in 1853 by an electrical telegraph that was destroyed by a storm in 1870. Coit Tower was paid for with money left by Lillie Hitchcock Coit (1843-1929), a wealthy socialite who loved to chase fires in the early days of the city's history. Before December 1866, there was no city fire department, and fires in the city, which broke out regularly in the wooden buildings, were extinguished by several volunteer fire companies. Coit was one of the more eccentric characters in the history of North Beach and Telegraph Hill, smoking cigars and wearing trousers long before it was socially acceptable for women to do so. She was an avid gambler and often dressed like a man in order to gamble in the males-only establishments that dotted North Beach.