Hoping to join in crowd as a National Landmark
Coit Tower, which turned 85 on Oct. 8, has been named a “nationally significant” historic place on the National Register of Historic Places. But for those who love the place — because they live nearby, because they admire its murals, because they recognize its historic value and because they relish the view from the top — that’s not enough.
There are 90,000 places in the National Register of Historic Places, and among those, 2,500 are National Historic Landmarks. A coalition of Coit Tower fans that includes the nonprofit Protect Coit Tower and the San Francisco Arts Commission is hoping to achieve the higher status, the designation of the tower as a National Historic Landmark. That elite group includes such local treasures as the cable cars, old military ships in the bay, the Old Mint and Alcatraz.
National Historic Landmark status is determined, after a nomination and application process that can take two to five years, by the secretary of the interior. No one has ever applied for that status for Coit Tower, says Jon Golinger, founder of Protect Coit Tower, which was started in 2011 “to raise public awareness of the problems of decay in the tower, and then to raise money to fix it and to support continuing education about the murals.” Golinger says that everyone loves the tower, “a wonderful state and local story. But it’s the murals that really rise to national significance.”
If the administration remains intact, the person who would approve the landmark status is Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, who was nominated to the job by President Trump. San Francisco may not be the dream city of many members of the Trump administration, but “if they do not love everything about San Francisco, they should love Coit Tower,” said Golinger.
The murals, painted in the mid-1930s, are best known as statements of political activism. But on the second floor, notes Golinger, are murals of people cavorting at sports, including polo. These images might be particularly pleasant to those with power to approve the landmark status. “Even in the Great Depression,” notes Golinger, “people were finding a way to have a good time.”
And what better way to say “finding a way to have a good time” than “Make America Great Again”? Zinke sure cuts a handsome figure on his horse, and I’m sure we can count on him to preserve American treasures as well as its values. We San Franciscans are pulling for that approval.
Nine works of art from the collection of Peter Selz were among the offerings in “Love & Abstraction,” an Oct. 5 auction at Christie’s in London. After a stint as curator at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, art historian/ collector/curator Selz came to the Bay Area to be founding director of the Berkeley Art Museum. He will be 100 years old in March, and, through recent years, has been still a steadfast part of the local art scene. “We were thrilled to work with the Selz family ... as Peter Selz stands as an incomparable figure in the Bay Area arts community,” said Ellanor Notides of Christie’s in San Francisco.
The works auctioned included three paintings by Sam Francis and “Personnage,” a painting by Jean Dubuffet, signed and dedicated to Selz in 1962. The top prices (around $421,000 each) were fetched by the Dubuffet and Francis’ 1986 painting “Iris.”
For some, they’re an inspiration for patriotic trembling, but for many of us in the Bay Area, the annual flight of the Blue Angels inspires — with its noise and military symbolism — a different kind of shuddering. Debbie Huysentruyt went to Hardly Strictly Bluegrass on Friday, and just as Dave Alvin and Jimmie Dale Gilmore finished singing “I Ain’t Gonna Study War No More,” she says, “the Blue Angels flew over.”
Meanwhile, after a weekend headlined by Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, and featuring the Mill Valley Film Festival, Castro Street Fair and 150th Italian Heritage Parade, it was time to go back to everyday issues.
“Perhaps a new version of Hardly Strictly can be planned for 2019,” suggests Julian Grant. “It can be a fundraiser to repair all the cracks in the Transbay Transit Terminal, Millennium Tower and Bay Bridge.” Grant suggests it be called “Hardly Strictly Standing.”
PUBLIC EAVESDROPPING “Don’t worry, I’m not that complicated.” Woman giving order to barista at Starbucks in East Bay, overheard by Elana Isaacs