SAN FRANCISCO – The view from Coit Tower, a national landmark that sits atop Telegraph Hill, is one of this city's most impressive, offering a panorama of the San Francisco Bay.

Inside the tower is another story. A ring of historic murals telling the story of California during the Great Depression is in disrepair, in some spots chipped, scratched, dirty or damaged by water. A poster describing the work of 27 artists who created the vivid frescoes is so warped it is hard to read.

"The murals are decaying every day without protection," said Jon Golinger, head of the neighborhood association Telegraph Hill Dwellers, who lives nearby and walks past the historic tower on his way to work.

Golinger and members of the newly formed Protect Coit Tower Committee are working to put a measure on the June ballot calling for the maintenance and preservation of the murals, tower and surrounding Pioneer Park. The art deco tower, a defining feature of the city's skyline, is, they say, lost in plain sight.

The measure comes at a time when city agencies are struggling with tight budgets and limited resources. Two of them, the Recreation and Parks Department and the Arts Commission, share responsibility for upkeep, in what Golinger calls a "two-headed beast of supervision."

The parks department, which takes care of the building and grounds, is seeking a long-term vendor to run the tower's elevator, gift and food concessions. Telegraph Hill neighbors, who were critical of earlier plans that would have allowed a Disneyland-style concession complete with employees in period costumes , were included in the development of guidelines for the new vendor.

Still, they worry the tower will become more commercialized. They say they are aware they live next to a prime tourist attraction, with the associated traffic snaking up narrow streets, the competition for parking and a gift shop selling the same kitsch that tourists find at Fisherman's Wharf. It's not that they want the spot for themselves, they say. They want it upgraded and preserved for everyone.

Under the new call for contracts, a vendor must allow one private event per month at the tower and come up with a plan to protect the paintings. The parks department will chip in 1 percent of the revenue it receives from concessions – it got more than $500,000 last year – to preserve the murals and is offering a one-time $250,000 payment to help fix them.

The ballot measure calls for using funds from concessions specifically to improve and preserve the tower and grounds. Parks department officials say that revenue collected at concessions goes toward running all city parks.

When it comes to the murals, parks officials refer questions to the Arts Commission. Allison Cummings, the commission's senior registrar, said the agency is assessing the cost of restoring the frescoes. The last full conservation was performed 20 years ago at a cost of more than $75,000, she said.

Controversy is nothing new at the tower, which was built in 1933 with funds from a passionate and eccentric city patron, Lillie Hitchcock Coit. She loved her adopted city so much that she left a third of her estate "for the purpose of adding to the beauty of the city."

Beauty, being as it is, in the eye of the beholder, was not always the adjective used to describe Coit Tower. Some people thought it was big and clunky when it opened with bare walls in the midst of the Great Depression. Local artists proposed the mural project to the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration, which paid for it as part of what became a precursor to the Works Progress Administration.

The frescoes are a social commentary on the times, including scenes of California's meatpacking and agricultural industries as well as its urban landscapes rendered in the subdued, rich colors of social realism.

The murals, completed at about the time of San Francisco's general strike in 1934, sparked their own debate over the appropriateness of using government funds for murals showing workers organizing and lining up to buy socialist publications. The grand opening was delayed for removal of pictures of a hammer and sickle painted over a set of windows.

These days, an estimated 200,000 people a year visit the tower, where there is no barrier protecting the ground-floor frescoes. Visitors can see the artwork on the second floor, also scratched and nicked in places, only on free public tours, offered twice weekly.

"There is no excuse for the treatment of those murals," said Ruth Gottstein, 89, of Amador County, daughter of muralist Bernard Zackheim, who painted her in a corner of his fresco of a library.

"Here is a tower you see as an icon for the city of San Francisco all over the world," Gottstein said. "The travel industry uses that tower emblem. You see the condition it's in, and you can say it's being exploited."

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Katherine Seligman is a San Francisco-based freelance writer.

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