RON HENGGELER

These Diego Rivera-inspired murals, many depicting the struggles of working class Americans, were completed in 1933-34. Coit Tower muralists protested and picketed at the tower when Rivera's mural commissioned for Rockefeller Center in New York City was destroyed after he refused to change an image of Lenin in the painting.

One of the murals includes a scene with depression era tent dwellers washing their clothes and panning for gold in the river below a new hydroelectric plant as chauffeur-driven rich people watch.

The opening of Coit Tower and the display of its murals was delayed several months because of the controversial content of some of the paintings.

California Industrial Scenes, by John Langley Howard who was known as a revolutionary regionalist painter, depicts striking miners of various ethnicity marching together in worker solidarity with one carrying a leftist paper.

Industries of California, another large mural in Coit Tower, was painted by Ralph Stackpole. Stackpole carved the Agriculture and Industry grouped statues on the former San Francisco Stock Exchange Building (where Rivera created his first U.S. mural Allegory of California).

The Stackpole mural depicts chemical, steel mill, cannery, news gathering, packaging line and other workers as cogs in the machines of industry. As a tribute the mural is compositionally very similar to Rivera's first sketch (all that Stackpole would have seen) for the recently destroyed Rockefeller Center mural.

Library, a public library interior mural at Coit Tower was painted by Bernard Zakheim a Polish Jew who sought political asylum in San Francisco after World War I. Zakheim helped organize the Coit Tower mural project along with Ralph Stackpole. An experienced muralist, Zakheim's scene includes portraits of fellow artists, assistants and his daughter.

One of the figures, John Langley Howard, reaches for a copy of Karl Marx's Das Kapital while crumpling a newspaper in his other hand. The titles of books on the shelves include 'Rexroth,' (the poet, essayist and social critic Kenneth Rexroth is reaching for a book on the top shelf) 'Hitler' and 'Oscar Wilde' (controversial because he was suspected of being homosexual). Newspaper headlines cover the artists protest of the Rivera fresco destruction (which Stackpole is reading) and other topical subjects. Jewish literature and traditions are also included in the painting.

The Coit Tower murals were a Public Works Art Project (PWAP, part of the New Deal during the Great Depression). They are now protected as a historical treasure and can be viewed daily inside the first floor of Coit Tower.

City Life, one of the largest murals at Coit Tower was painted by Victor Mikhail Arnautoff who had worked as an assistant to Diego Rivera in Mexico and taught at the California School of Fine Arts (CSFA). Arnautoff later taught at Stanford University before returning to Russia after the death of his wife.

The controversial mural includes a traffic accident, armed robbery and leftist newspapers. In addition a fire engine (Knickerbocker Engine Company No.5—a tribute to Lilly Hitchcock-Coit) and the San Francisco Stock Exchange (with sculptures by fellow muralist Ralph Stackpole) are depicted.

Faculty and students at CSFA who participated as artists in the project were Maxine Albro, Ray Bertrand, Rinaldo Cuneo, Mallette Harold Dean, Clifford Wight, Edith Hamlin, George Harris, Robert B. Howard, Otis Oldfield, Suzanne Scheuer, Hebe Daum and Frede Vidar.

The majority of the artists producing the Coit Tower murals agreed to work in a similar style (Rivera's) and technique (fresco) which required them to be produced on site since the mural becomes part of the wall.

Most of the artists had to incorporate the structure—windows and doors—of the building into their murals.

The NRA and eagle symbol on the crates workers are filling with oranges refers to the National Recovery Administration and the Blue Eagle Drive.

California Agriculture, a mural by Maxine Albro depicts farming tasks associated with the four seasons.

The Blue Eagle Drive was the name given to a moral propaganda campaign to convince business to "do their part" and adhere to self governmental codes to hasten recovery from the depression.

Two of the murals are of San Francisco Bay scenes.
Most murals are done in fresco; the exceptions are one mural done in egg tempera (upstairs, in the last decorated room) and the works done in the elevator foyer, which are oil on canvas.

The murals at Coit Tower are available for daily viewing by the general public for free, but access to the second floor murals is restricted to once a week tours. San Francisco City Guides free walking tour of Coit Tower every Saturday at 11:00 AM gives visitors access to the spiral stairway and second floor murals.