A NEW AGE FOR ARTISTS: THE BIRTH OF THENEW DEAL ART MOVEMENT AND THEPOLITICAL CONNOTATIONS OF THE COlTTOWER MURALS

Timothy Rottenberg

Prior to 1934, public art did not exist in the United States ofAmerica.Occasionally, paintings by individual artists would achieve success andbreak out of the art gallery and private commission sphere into thepublic eye, but visibility was not widespread. With the construction ofCoit Tower in San Francisco, the creation of the Public Works of ArtProject (PWAP) in ‘934, and the unemployment of artists due to theGreat Depression, a unique synchronistic moment came about when thebirth of public art in America was forged. For the first time in Americanhistory, the PWAP gave artists the opportunity to reflect local andnational politics through their own political lens using a medium thatwas meant for mass consumption by the public.i

In January of there was nothing exciting about the San Francisco skyline. The city’s two tallest buildings stood at a stout 435 feet, andlay inconspicuously in the valley of the financial district, dwarfed even bythe seven natural hills of San Francisco that surrounded them. With theGolden Gate and Bay bridges only in the earliest stages of construction,San Francisco lacked architectural individuality. Appropriately, LillieHitchcock Coit, a wealthy and eccentric San Francisco resident, desiredbeautification for the city she so admired. Despite having been born inMaryland and living in France for a number of years, the allure of the

I believe this thesis to be wholly original in the field of historical study on the PublicWorks Administration as it related to the field of public art in America. Although itsconclusions can at times seem like common and previously established theories relating toDepression era art, no study as in depth and specific has been done that I was able touncover in my research. I have attempted to take the history surrounding a minormonument in San Francisco and apply it to the broader historical themes of the rise of theworking class and the evolution of the rights and abilities of mankind.

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City by the Bay led Coit to refer to it as her “soul city.”2 Upon her deathin 1929, she left one third of her fortune, an amount totaling $u8,ooo tothe city of San Francisco, specifically for “the purpose of adding to thebeauty of the city which I have always loved.”3 The city’s board ofsupervisors first met in early 1931 to decide what to do with the newlybequeathed sum of money. Not surprisingly, the bureaucratic mindedgroup of officials proposed the use of the funds for the construction of aroadway around Lake Merced.4 After protests from the executors ofCoit’s estate, the city agreed to create a Coit Advisory Committee, whichconspired to find a use for the funds more in accordance with Coit’sintentions. Citing Coit’s attempted purchase of Pioneer Park earlier inher life, the committee agreed to set aside the open space on top ofTelegraph Hill for the construction of a memorial.

Arthur Brown Jr. was selected as the architect and told to workwithin the confines of a $125,000 budget. In an attempt to craft thegreatest memorial possible with such limited funds, Brown Jr. drew upplans for a “simple fluted shaft” using the relatively inexpensive buildingmaterial of reinforced concrete. During this planning phase, an electionyear in San Francisco brought a new mayor and new legislation thattransferred control of the tower project back under bureaucratic control.Brown re-modeled his tower into an even simpler form of shaft, makingit “stronger, more massive, and more primitive,” all while cutting costs.6Strong support from the former advisory committee, which still maintained the final say on how Coit’s funds were spent, kept the concept ofthe tower alive. It may or may not be coincidental that businessmanHerbert Fleishhacker, instrumental in creating the Coit AdvisoryCommittee, chair of the committee himself, as well as personal friend ofarchitect Arthur Brown Jr., had a “considerable financial interest” in thePortland Cement Association, which supplied the 5,000 barrels ofcement and 3,200 cubic yards of concrete for the project. 7 By 1938Fleishhacker’s shady dealings in other fields were uncovered and broughtto trial, and he finished the year bankrupt and disgraced.8 Having finallytraversed the winding road of bureaucracy, design, and preparation,construction of the Telegraph Hill memorial, known henceforth as Coit

Masha Zakheim, Colt Tower Son Froncisco: Its History ond Art. (Volcano: VolcanoPress, 2009), 5.

Ibid.Ibid.

Brown and Jeffrey T. Tilman, Arthur Brown Jr.: Progressive Clossicist (New York:W.W. Norton & Co., 2005.), 2.

6 Ibid.7Zakheim, Colt Tower, io.

“Finished Fleishhacker,” Time, November 7, 1938.

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Tower, began in January ‘933, four years after the death of Lillie Hitchcock Colt.

Despite its beginnings as a purely architectural work, those mostgreatly affected by the construction of Colt Tower were the local artistsof San Francisco. From the moment ground broke on the constructionsite at Pioneer Park, the sleepy artists’ community, historically aroundTelegraph Hill, was given a huge and rude awakening. The planned 210-

foot tower, combined with the 288-foot elevation ofTelegraph Hill itself,was to be an imposing landmark towering over everything in its vicinity.This of course was exactly what the planners had in mind. The pleas ofthe local artists, including a petition ironically signed by many of thepainters who later worked in the tower’s lobby, did nothing to halt theconstruction of the looming monument. The socio-economic changebrought to the neighborhoods surrounding Telegraph Hill by the comingof the tower is best summed up in this passage from artist Eleanor Sully’smemoir, “Remembering Telegraph Hill”:

The Hill as we used to call it (some people still do) was our private island, lapped by the currents of the city but remote from them. We werea small, self-sufficient society bound together by love of each other andof painting, sculpture, literature, theater and the views. .. No one hadmuch money, but food was cheap and Spediacci’s grocery at the top ofUnion Street carried customers on credit until somebody sold something or went to work for the WPA.9

The coming of the tower completely transformed these artists’ idylliclifestyle. By turning their pseudo-communal paradise into a touristattraction, Coit Tower drove local housing costs through the roof andforced the artists to start working or move out. One visionary woman,Mrs. Cecilia Bowlby-Gledhill, owner of the local “Dead Fish Café,”wandered out drunk and alone to express her feelings for the newlycompleted tower with a loaded weapon.ro While Sully remembered it asa shotgun, the Los Angeles Times declared it differently in the followingstatement, “Mrs. Honore Cecilia Bowlby-Gledhill, daughter ofan Englishadmiral and kin of British nobility, was given a thirty-day suspendedsentence in municipal court today for having fired a pistol at the newCoit memorial tower.”u Either way, the distaste of the local communityfor the new behemoth in the neighborhood was adequately expressed.Both aesthetically and economically, the local artists were strangled by

Eleanor Sully, “Remembering Telegraph Hill,” The North American Review 268 (1983):

15-17.

°lbid.“Kin of Nobility in Court for Pot Shot at Tower,” Los Angeles Times, November 23,1933.

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the arrival of the tower in their neighborhood. Like any liberal-leaningand activist-oriented social circle, the artists of Telegraph Hill chose toput up a fight before being run out of their homes, and organized for thepurpose of obtaining work from the government.

Headed by Bernard B. Zakheim, a Jewish-American artist who hadjust returned to San Francisco from working in Paris, the artists of thecity corralled each other’s support, and pocket change, with the intention of sending a letter to Washington informing them of the desperatestate of the artist in San Francisco. Much to their surprise, the artistsreceived a positive and detailed response from the White House in onlyfour days. Unbeknownst to them, Washington was already at workcreating jobs for artists not only in San Francisco, but across America. Inone of the truly synchronistic moments in history, forces in Washingtonhad already worked for a few months to outline a plan for artist reliefacross the Nation. Inspired equally by the burgeoning New Deal and the19205 public art movement in Mexico, artist George Biddle wrote to hisold college friend President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and imploredhim to support public art in America. With Roosevelt’s nod of approval,Edward Bruce, a lawyer/businessman/painter who also happened to be alobbyist in Washington, took up the mantle of forging an Americanpublic art renaissance. His realistic business sense and strong personaldrive to assist the arts led to the creation of the Public Works of ArtProject (PWAP). The PWAP, which took place a full year and a halfbefore the famed and massive Works Progress Administration (WPA),was an experimental pilot program that tested the waters for federalsupport of the arts in America. Despite only existing from December1933until June1934, Bruce’s PWAP employed hundreds of artists around thecountry, as well as administered the massive undertaking that becamethe murals of Coit Tower. Essentially, a perfect storm had brewed in SanFrancisco in early 1934. A collection of artists demanded work, a federalagency looked for artists to employ, and a newly constructed monumentsat atop Telegraph Hill with a bare lobby. The stage for painting the CoitTower murals was set.

With a place to paint and a commission to do it, the experimentalPWAP gave artists the opportunity to reflect local and national politicsthrough their own political lens in the newly constructed Coit Tower.Tasked with portraying scenes of life in California, the twenty-six artists,both male and female, went to worlc in Coit Tower painting California asthey saw it in early 1934, grasped in the jaws of the Great Depression.Depictions ranged from cheerfully defiant of the ensuing gloom todownright discouraging, each an indicator of the artists’ feelings on thehot political issues of the day. With a cast of artists who reported in fromall over the political spectrum, it is no surprise that a select few labor

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friendly artists painted images deemed offensive by their capitalistbosses. Each artist was well aware that he was working for the Americangovernment, and should paint accordingly to “please the customer.” Inan open letter read by every artist at the start of their PWA? employment, Edward Bruce outlined the three major directives of the project tohis newly employed painters:

First, to support professional artists and thereby create quality art; second, to educate the public to appreciate the art thus generated; andthird, to please the patron (i.e., the U.S. Government) without threatening patriotism or violating conventional art traditions (i.e., producenothing too avant-garde or left-leaning) .12

Despite this fair warning, four artists, who are to be discussed later indetail, chose to incorporate themes that could be construed by themainstream public as leftist. Some truly just painted what they saw,others of the more incendiary variety purposely painted symbols thatchallenged and upset the United States government.

The summer of 1934 was not a particularly good time to be a labor-friendly citizen of San Francisco, much less an artist. It was an electionyear, and for the first time in California history, one of the major candidates proposed that the State of California say “goodbye” to capitalism.Socialist author Upton Sinclair won the democratic nomination andbecame a major player in the 1934 California gubernatorial election.Having seduced Californians with his End Poverty in California (E.P.I.C.)plan, his wide-ranging support network throughout the state hadconservatives scared into believing that he might actually have a chanceat pulling one of the Nation’s most vibrant economies out from undertheir feet. As such, the leading republicans and business tycoonslaunched a full strength assault on all things red that painted communists as the source of all evil, with Sinclair featured among them. With aseemingly endless amount of money and established political power onthe side of conservatism, no one in California was spared from the anti-communist slew of propaganda in 1934. In addition, the port of SanFrancisco was famously shut down that summer as part of the WestCoast longshoreman’s strike. “Bloody Thursday” erupted on July fifth,tensions between labor and management at an all-time high in the city.It was in this political climate that the art of Coit Tower was to beabsorbed by the public. Controversy surrounding the art in the towerbrewed so strong that its planned mid-summer opening had to be

‘Zakheim, Colt Tower, 13.

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pushed back until October 20, once a certain offending piece wasremoved.

Another element working against the public reception of the artists’labors was the very medium in which they painted. The ancient traditionof fresco (i.e., painting on wet plaster) took up new meaning in thetwentieth century with the growing popularity of Mexican muralistsDiego Rivera, José Orozco and David Siqueiros. “The three great ones” ofthe Mexican art ‘renaissance’ of the 1920S synthesized the influences ofMexican history, modern day Marxism, and social realism into theirmurals, creating a new art form the world had never seen.;3 Oncethought of as the antiquated artistic medium of a by-gone era, fresco wasnow vibrant, fresh, modern, and most importantly, politically dangerous.Anthony W. Lee sums up how the Mexican muralists affected themedium of fresco, and how the medium was likely to be received by SanFranciscans in the early thirties:

In the context of public painting in San Francisco, the ability to readsynecdochically had been conditioned by the practice of looking at murals since the first arrival of Rivera. It was he who splintered murals intounwieldy components and beckoned attention to pictorial (dis)unity.Under the proddings of communist artists, incoherence, along withnarrative and compositional breakdown, had been put into productivetension with the threat of radical activism. In the two decades that followed, with repeated practice, San Franciscans had learned how to lookat left-leaning murals, how to recognize what a subversive murallooked like.14

The importance of Diego Rivera to the artists of Colt Tower cannotbe overstated. By any accounts, he was a massive influence on everyartist to paint within the tower. Every artist in the business was familiarwith Rivera, and for the twenty-six fresco artists of Coit Tower, appreciating the work of the leading artist in the field was nearly mandatory.Several of the painters had even visited Mexico to study under Rivera, orattended and worked on his mural paintings in America. Upon destruction of one of Rivera’s murals at Rockefeller Center in New York City, theartists of Coit Tower demonstrated an acute and tangible example ofsupport for the Mexican muralist. According to the San Pro ncisco News,local action was taken during the summer months in support of Rivera,including the passage of a resolution from the union of San Francisco

‘3Betty Botis, Diego Rivera’s Powerftul Messages in Mexican Muralism. Diego Rivera prints,accessed April 29, 2010, http://www.diego-rivera.org/article4-mexican-muralism.html.

Anthony W. Lee, Painting on the Left: Diego Rivera, Radical Politics, and San Francisco’s Public Murals, ied. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 223.

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artists, as well as a “protest meeting at the Coit Tower.”r5 Thus, anotherobstacle was set in front of the Coit Tower muralists. In a climatecompletely opposed to both the subject matter and the medium of theirwork, they attempted to win over both public opinion and appease theirgovernment masters, all while maintaining the personal artistic integrityof their radical political ideals.

Four artists in particular caused a disproportionate amount of chagrin with their works inside of Coit Tower. John Langley Howard,Bernard Zalcheim, Victor Arnautoff, and Clifford Wight each paintedscenes of stark social reality which proved to be too harsh for acceptanceby the general public. Immediately to the right of the entrance inside thelobby lies John Langley Howard’s Ca1fornia Industrial Scenes (fig. i). Asdescribed by Masha Zaltheim in her history of Coit Tower, Langleypainted “a miner reading The Western Worker, a large group of militantunemployed workers with a black man [and a LatinoJ in the foreground”as well as a harsh juxtaposition between a destitute family mining forscraps of wealth and a visiting group of affluent tourists stepping out oftheir limousine. Howard got away with these iconic leftist images bypainting them amidst scenes of the massive industrial power of California. When awed by the impressive visual of a huge hydroelectric powerplant and dam, as well as the speeding visage of a modern locomotive,the average viewer is not apt to focus in on the scenes of destitution andpoverty.

Bernard Zakheim, the same man who was influential in organizingthe artists ofTelegraph Hill to demand work from Washington, filled hisLibrary with a slew of left-of-center headlines, running the gamut from“Local Artists Protest Destruction of Rivera Fresco” to “ThousandsSlaughtered in Austria.” Zakheim clearly had a local and nationalpolitical agenda. The most controversial depiction in his mural was offellow artist John Langley Howard reaching for a copy of Karl Marx’s DasKapital with one hand, while crumpling a copy of a newspaper with theother (fig. 2). According to Anica Williams, tour guide and residentexpert on the Coit Tower Murals, Zakheim is representing “a man tired ofreading depressing headlines and reaching for a new solution. He’sliterally throwing away capitalism and reaching upwards towardscommunism.”i6

Victor Arnautoff, in what many called the premier mural of thetower, depicted his idea of an average day in the financial district of San

‘ “Destruction of Rivera Mural in N.Y. Termed Murder: Capitalism Couldn’t Talce It,’San Francisco News, February 14, 1934. Page numbers

‘“Anica Williams, Interview by author. Personal interview. Coit Tower, Telegraph Hill,April to, zoto.

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Francisco in his work, City Life (figs. a and 3b). Included are a numberof images, which while not openly leftist, still put an uneasy feeling inthe stomach of any staunch conservative. Next to the U.S. mailbox, thereis a man waving a red flag in what appears to be a Soviet military uniformfrom behind. To his right, a man is being robbed at gunpoint, while thecrowd around him presses on unnoticing. Nearby there is a policemandoing nothing. Also pictured is a wealthy looking businessman with hishead buried in newspapers, too removed from the world to look up atthe street around him. Most often cited by the press are Arnautoffsinclusion of both New Masses and the Daily Worker on the newspaperstand, but the omission of the San Francisco Chronicle. All thingsconsidered, there is not enough hard evidence to indict Arnautoff as acard-carrying communist, but his artworlc succeeded in making hispolitical agenda obvious enough to be clear to the informed viewer.

While the works of Arnautoff, Zaclcheim, and Howard required interpretation by the viewer to arrive at leftist ideologies, Clifford Wighttook one step too far by painting a full-fledged hammer and sickle,surrounded by the slogan “Workers of the World Unite.”17 Part of aseries of three symbolic emblems painted above windows, the hammerand sickle stood over the far left window, with the blue eagle of the NRAemblazoning the space over the middle window, and “In God We Trust”over the right window, crossed over with chains. As if this were notprovocative enough, a reporter from the Hearst newspaper empirefanned the flames of the situation even more. During the politicalturmoil and confusion surrounding the delay of the tower’s opening, areporter illegally and covertly gained access to the locked tower andphotographed some of the murals in question.;8 Typical of the mainstream media’s assault on leftist ideas at the time, the newspaper decidedto run a forged photo playing up the severity of the communist sympathyin the tower. The altered photo featured Clifford Wight’s “Workers of theWorld Unite” slogan placed directly over Bernard Zakheim’s controversial library scene (fig. ). Although the text of the article correctly statedthat the slogan was located over a window, any journalist knows that apicture can speak a thousand words and the intent of the mischievousediting was obvious. Public opinion turned irreversibly against theartists, and Colt Tower remained locked up by the art commissionerswho woriced for the PWAP and represented Washington until somethingwas done about Wight’s slogan. While at first supportive of their fellowartists creative freedom, even going so far as to picket for his support, the

‘7Zakheim, Colt Tower, 30.8 Ibid.

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threat of losing future work made the other artists of the tower one byone turn their backs on Wight. Victor Arnautoff wrote in his memoir:

I did not dream of the reaction that ensued. Petitions appeared—somefrom the artists—demanding removal of Wight’s mural, for politicalreasons. I marveled at how rapidly opinions changed among those whobefore had picketed the tower entrance. Today they cowardly signedtheir names to condemn the work of a colleague. The artists were afraidof losing future commissions—economic pressure destroyed their resistance. Ralph Stackpole, Bernard Zakheim, Clifford Wight and I declinedto sign the petitiOflS.19

This polarizing statement shows concisely and clearly who the trueleftists among the tower artists were. Missing is the painter of thepolitically turbulent California Industrial Scenes, John Langley Howard. Itis likely that he had succumbed to the fear of blacklisting, which was aconstant threat hanging over the head of every politically charged artistin the early 193oS. To sign a petition in support of communist symbolswould have been viewed as treasonous, and have serious consequences.for one artist, these consequences struck home. According to thememoir ofArnautoff, Clifford Wight was deported immediately following the incident, and his three window mounted symbols were paintedover by an unknown hand. The details regarding Wight’s deportation, aswell as the identity of the person responsible for painting over hissymbols are lost among the other events of the turbulent summer of1934, and remain a mystery to modern historians.

Although the most popular political counter-culture of the time wasthat of the left, leftists were not the only ones to emblazon the towerwith symbols of their ideals. One muralist, frede Vidar, was notoriouslyknown as an avid supporter of Hitler. He frequently expressed pro-Nazisympathies in 1934, including the scratching of a swastika into a layer ofwhitewash in a window of the tower. His painting, Department Store,showcases both a box bearing the “SS” logo, as well as a newspaperarticle displaying the visage of Hitler himself. The female deli owner hasa Jewish star painted on her cap, although it is not known whether thiswas painted in by Vidar himself as a way of”marlcing” the woman, or if itwas added in by another artist after the completion of his worlc withouthis knowledge. In the mural Banking and Law, located directly next toVidar’s and painted by artist George Harris, many books in the lawlibrary are given fake titles and authors, who are named after fellow

‘ Victor Arnautoff, A Lfe Renewed:An Autobiographical Sketch. None: Unpublished.Courtesy of Bay Area Labor Archives (Contact: Catherine Powell).

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painters in the tower and their habits. Harris has titled one book Laws onSeduction, and named the author as Herr Vidar. Given the short span oftime during which the artists were forced to work, Vidar’s frequentflirting with women in the tower had been a deplorable distraction toeveryone around him. There was also conflict with proud Jewish-American artist Bernard Zakheim. In American Jewish History, MaryElizabeth Boone notes, “Zaltheim also included friends and enemies inhis mural. The man in yellow, for example, depicts fellow-muralist FredeVidar, a Danish-born San Franciscan who freely expressed antisemiticsentiments during their months together painting the Coit Towermurals. Zakheim vented his dislike for Vidar by depicting him as a blindman, with the features of a Down syndrome victim.”2o Having been theonly fascist out of twenty-six artists and therefore the black sheep ofpolitical thought in the group, frede Vidar showcased his ideologieswithin his woric, just as many of the leftists did their own. While low-lceycompared to the symbols of Clifford Wight, Vidar’s sympathies comeacross about as strongly as those of Victor Arnautoffs mural. FredeVidar, like Arnautoff and all of the other artists, used the opportunitygranted to him by the PWAP to paint California as he saw it through hispersonal political spectrum.

Also present in the tower were artists who chose to make their political statement by avoiding the symbols of the Depression as much aspossible. The most apparent of these come from the artists MaxineAibro, Otis Oldfield, and Jane Berlandina. In Aibro’s vast agriculturalexpanse known simply as Ca1fornia, the viewer is shown a busy andbustling fruit-picking scene, absolutely rife with productivity (fig. 5). TheNational Recovery Act (NRA) symbols on the crates, which are the onlymention of the Depression era in the entire piece, seem out of place onpackages overflowing with healthy looking oranges. Attentive viewersnotice that there are even ladies picking scores of flowers, dressed inwhat were popularly known as “beach pajamas.” Instead of working tofeed their families, these women look like they have stopped by on theirway back from an afternoon of lounging away on the shore. Finally, thetype of crops pictured represent popular fruits of both northern andsouthern California, representing prolonged statewide prosperity. ToMaxine Albro, a Diego Rivera trained artist, it was more important topaint encouraging signs ofwealth for the public than to discourage themwith depressing imagery.

Otis Oldfield, a well-respected artist at the time of the painting, wastasked with painting views of the bay from Telegraph Hill for the elevator

‘° Elizabeth Boone, “Something of his Own Soil’: Jewish History, Mural Painting, andBernard Zakheim in San Francisco,” American Jewish History 90(2002)2131.

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lobby. He preferred to woric in his home studio instead of amongst aplethora of other artists. While there, Oldfield created breathtaking oilpaintings of the views directly northwest and east from Telegraph Hill intwo separate panels. Defiantly, he placed people in the foreground of hisworlcs, in a smaller scale than the one used by the artists in the rest of thetower. Most notable in Oldfield’s works today is the lack of developmentin what is now the bustling port of Oakland, as well as the absence ofbridges connecting the San Francisco peninsula to the outside world.These were not artistic omissions, but rather accurate representations ofthe environment around San Francisco in early 1934. There is only onesmall reference to the Depression era, in a few planks sitting on a dockwith no workers in sight to load them onto the waiting cargo ship. Asexplained by Masha Zakheim, “According to Jane Oldfield, daughter ofOtis Oldfield, while her father was not a political artist, he was paintingwhat he saw.”21

Finally, and most starkly in contrast with the rest of the work in thetower is Jane Berlandina’s Home Lfe. Critic of Rivera and the modernfresco movement, Berlandina, refused to paint in any other style thanthe modern impressionist tempura (fig. 6). Appropriately, her work isseparated from the rest of the artists, on the second floor and in aseparate room. The errant artist painted a scene of plenty, a prosperousfamily enjoying their life at home amongst a grand piano, servants, manyworks of art, and a fully stocked pantry of goods. Her painting techniquesticlcs out like a sore thumb. According to Junius Cravens of the SanFrancisco News, “Most people appear to think, however, that the Berlandina paintings are unfinished, in fact barely begun.”22 The well-educated Berlandina knew that her artistic medium appeared out ofplace and primitive compared to the rest of the works in the tower, butshe chose to use it anyways. Although she did not express a politicalagenda, Berlandina furthered her point of criticism for the Fresco revivalof the 19205 and 193os, showing true courage to be the only artist todisobey the style directive imposed on the tower muralists as a whole.

from leftists to fascists and everything in between, the political spectrum represented in the Coit Tower murals is all-inclusive. The intensepolitical climate of the time period was like a magnifying glass whichamplified the effects of any questionable symbols in the murals, whetherthey were intended to be offensive or not. In the end, artistic integritywas maintained for the most part; only one set of murals, CliffordWight’s telling symbols, were forcibly removed. Thanks to the efforts of

Zakheim, Colt Tower, 2$.

junius Cravens, “City May Be Proud of Mural Decorations Put On Coit Tower Wallsby San Francisco Artists,” San Francisco News, October 20, 1934. Page numbers

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Edward Bruce and the PWAP, these local San Francisco artists were ableto reflect local and national politics through their own political lensusing a medium that for the first time was meant to be consumed enmasse by the public. And consume they did, for months after the towersopening, crowds thronged to absorb San Francisco’s first publiclyproduced art, as well as the exemplary view from the tallest man-madestructure in the city. After October 20, 1934, once the tower finallyopened, all involved must have uttered a collective sigh of relief. Controversial in all stages of its construction, from architectural design toartistic intent, Coit Tower was finished and successful. The artists wereable to eat and were also able to afford the abrupt rise in rent for theirTelegraph Hill apartments —for one more year. The PWAP had proved itsworth and opened up the path for the WPA to follow in its footsteps, andthose like the businessman Herbert Fleishhacker, who had set out tomake money, had done just that. Junius Cravens most eloquently statedthe mood of the day in his review of the opening day of the tower for theSon Francisco News:

Taking everything into consideration, the tower decorators have doneremarkably fine work. There is no question but that some of the panelsleave much to be desired. Two or three of them are very weak. But eventhe worst mural faults are of minor importance as compared to themerits of the job as a whole. San Francisco should be not only proud ofthis group of artists but grateful to them as well. And this not only forwhat they have given the city but also because of the courageous way inwhich they tackled such a Gargantuan problem, fraught as it was withdifficulties and discouragements, and licked it—knocked it out cold.23

Timothy Rotten berg currently studies history as an undergraduate at SanFrancisco State University. Timothy is a distinguished scholar beginning atthe high school level as a participant and Secretariat ofMission Viejo HighSchool’s Model United Nations Program. After receiving his BA., Timothyintends to begin a single-subject credential to teach history at the high schoollevel. Being accepted into Ex Post facto is Timothy’sfirst major achievementin the field ofHistory.

23 Ibid.

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