[1] The Art Deco tower, built of unpainted reinforced concrete, was designed by architects Arthur Brown Jr. and Henry Temple Howard.

[6] 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.

"[7] 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 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.

This proposal brought disapproval from the estate's executors, who expressed a desire that the county find "ways and means of expending this money on a memorial that in itself would be an entity and not a unit of public development".

[7] The following month Honore Bowlby-Gledhill, proprietor of the Dead Fish Cafe (an 'artists' restaurant') in Telegraph Hill, was charged (under the name 'Helen Smith') with shooting a pistol at the tower.

Ralph Stackpole and Bernard Zakheim successfully sought the commission in 1933, and supervised the muralists, including Maxine Albro,[54] Victor Arnautoff, Jane Berlandina, Ray Bertrand, Ray Boynton, Ralph Chessé,[55][56] Rinaldo Cuneo, Ben Cunningham,[57] Mallette "Harold" Dean, Parker Hall,[54] Edith Hamlin,[58] George Albert Harris, William Hesthal,[59] John Langley Howard,[60] Lucien Labaudt,[61] Gordon Langdon, Jose Moya del Pino[62][63] Otis Oldfield,[64] Frederick Olmsted Jr., Suzanne Scheuer,[65] Edward Terada, Frede Vidar, and Clifford Wight.

[66] These artists (chosen by Walter Heil, director of the de Young Museum, together with other officials) were each paid $25 to $45 per week to depict "aspects of life in California.

Workers of all races are shown as equals, often in the heroic poses of Socialist realism, while well-dressed racially white members of the capitalist classes enjoy the fruit of their labor.

John Langley Howard's mural California Industrial Scenes  2  depicts an ethnically diverse Labor March as well as showing a destitute family panning for gold while a wealthy, heavily caricatured ensemble observes.

[70] Some of the book titles that appear in the law library, such as Civil, Penal, and Moral Codes, are legitimate, while others list fellow muralists as authors, in a joking or derogatory manner.

[69] After most of the Coit Tower murals had already been completed, the 1934 West Coast waterfront strike, taking place nearby at the foot of Telegraph Hill,[71] caused government officials, shipping companies, some union leaders and the press to raise fears about communist agitation.

[67] This "red scare" has been identified as playing a "crucial role" in a subsequent controversy that mainly focused on two of the murals: On June 23, 1934, the conservative banker Herbert Fleishhacker, the most powerful member of the committee allocating funds from the Public Works of Art Project, asked Heil to inspect the art, who telegraphed back that some artists had included "details ... and certain symbols which might be interpreted as communistic propaganda," and that "editors of influential papers ... have warned us that they would take hostile attitude towards whole project unless those details be removed.

[67] However, federal government officials decided that the offending parts would need to be painted over, and 16 of the artists signed a statement saying that they opposed the hammer and sickle symbol and that it "has no place in the subject matter assigned.

Coit Tower is a prominent landscape feature in Alfred Hitchcock's 1958 film, Vertigo, set largely in San Francisco.

Art director Henry Bumstead, who worked on Vertigo, noted that Hitchcock was adamant that Coit Tower should be seen in the film from the apartment of the lead character, portrayed by Stewart.