Coit Tower and Telegraph Hill, San Francisco
Part of the full San Francisco Layover: Cable Cars, SFO
Coit Tower stands on the summit of San Francisco’s Telegraph Hill with twenty-seven 1934 frescoes on its ground floor that cost nothing to see, and a wooden stairway of nearly 400 steps running down the hill behind it.
Twenty-seven frescoes were painted inside Coit Tower in 1934
Lillie Hitchcock Coit left a third of her estate to the city when she died in 1929, and Arthur Brown Jr. spent part of it on a plain fluted concrete column, 210 feet high, finished on the top of Telegraph Hill in 1933. The murals came the year after, painted by more than twenty artists on the federal Public Works of Art Project payroll.
What they painted is California at work in the middle of the Depression: cannery lines, wheat fields, a meat plant, a stockbroker’s office, a newspaper stand, a street robbery in progress. Most of it is fresco, laid straight into wet plaster, and looking at the ground-floor rooms is free. The lift to the observation deck is the part that costs money, $11 for a non-resident adult and $8 for a resident, and the second-floor murals open only on a $5 guided tour.
Columbus Avenue and Washington Square at the foot of the hill
North Beach sits in the saddle between Telegraph Hill and Russian Hill, and Washington Square is its middle: a plain rectangle of grass with Saints Peter and Paul Church, twin white spires and a Romanesque front, standing along the north side of it.
Columbus Avenue cuts diagonally past it, and the cafés, bakeries and bookshops along it are the reason people linger here rather than any single building. It is the flat part of this trip and the part that works late: the tower closes at 5pm or 6pm, the streets below it do not, and a two-hour guided walk with food stops sets off from Columbus Avenue in the evening if you would rather be shown around than work it out yourself.
Pioneer Park’s terrace looks straight at Alcatraz without a ticket
Pioneer Park is the ground Coit Tower stands in, a ring of cypress and low wall at the summit of Telegraph Hill, and the paved terrace around the parking circle is open to anyone who gets up there. Alcatraz sits square in the middle of the view north, with the Marin hills behind it and the piers of the northern waterfront directly below.
The tower’s own deck, 210 feet up, gives you the same water through glass and a good deal more of the city besides, and that is what the $11 buys. The terrace gives you the bay for nothing, which for a short stop is often the trade worth making.
Nearly 400 steps drop down the east face of Telegraph Hill
Filbert Street stops being a street at the top of Telegraph Hill and becomes a stairway. It starts as concrete, turns to timber partway down, and reaches Sansome Street after something close to 400 steps, with the Greenwich Steps doing the same job one block north.
Halfway down, Napier Lane runs off to one side: not a street but a plank walkway with nineteenth-century cottages along it, one of the very few wooden lanes left in the city. The planting either side of the steps is the Grace Marchant Garden, started in 1949 by a former Hollywood stuntwoman who moved in when the slope was an unofficial rubbish tip and spent the rest of her life clearing and planting it. Neighbours have kept it going since. The flock of cherry-headed conures that lives on this side of the hill is usually audible before it is visible.
There is no lift, no ramp and no landing wide enough to park anything on: the stairs are the whole route, in both directions.
The only way up the hill without stairs is Telegraph Hill Boulevard
Telegraph Hill Boulevard spirals up from Lombard Street to the parking circle at Coit Tower, and a small Muni bus, the 39, runs it from Washington Square. That is the whole step-free option; everything else up the hill is a staircase.
For the airport, walk or ride down to the Market Street subway and use Powell Street station, where BART shares the platforms. San Francisco International Airport (SFO) is 31 minutes from there for $11.80 on a Clipper card, with the Yellow and Red lines both running during the day and the Yellow line alone every 20 minutes after 9pm; the last airport train leaves Powell at 12:43am. From the bottom of the Filbert Steps you are already on Sansome Street in the financial district, which is a ten-minute walk to the same platforms.
If the hill is more climbing than the day calls for, the San Francisco layover guide covers the flat version of this part of town, along the Embarcadero and through Chinatown, without the 400 steps.
Frequently asked questions
Do you have to pay to see the Coit Tower murals?
Not for the ground floor, where most of them are. Walking into the base of the tower and looking at the 1934 frescoes costs nothing. The lift up to the observation deck is the part that charges: $11 for a non-resident adult, $8 for a San Francisco resident, with lower rates for seniors, teenagers and children and free entry under five. A separate $5 guided tour covers the second-floor murals, which are otherwise closed. Opening is daily, 10am to 6pm from April to October and 10am to 5pm from November to March.
Is there a step-free way up Telegraph Hill?
There is a road, and that is the answer. Telegraph Hill Boulevard spirals up from Lombard Street to the parking circle at the top, and a small bus runs it, which is the only route up that avoids stairs. The Filbert and Greenwich Steps, the two stairways down the eastern face, have no lift, no ramp and no alternative alongside them: roughly 400 steps of concrete and then timber, with handrails but no landings wide enough to rest a wheeled bag on. If steps are not an option, plan on the road both ways.
Are the parrots of Telegraph Hill actually still there?
Yes, and you are more likely to hear them first. The flock is cherry-headed conures, South American birds descended from escaped and released pets, and the eastern slope around the Filbert Steps and the Grace Marchant Garden is where they spend most of their time. They move as a group and they are loud, so a sudden burst of screeching in the trees above the steps is the usual introduction. Nothing about seeing them is scheduled or guaranteed.
What is worth doing around Telegraph Hill in the evening?
North Beach, below the hill, is the part of this walk that gets better after dark rather than worse: Columbus Avenue's cafés and bakeries stay busy late and Washington Square fills up in the evening. A guided evening walk through North Beach and Chinatown runs about two hours from Columbus Avenue and covers both neighbourhoods with food stops along the way, which suits a genuinely late departure. Coit Tower itself shuts at 5pm or 6pm depending on the season, so the tower is a daytime stop and the streets below it are the evening one.