Lillie Hitchcock Coit

Lillie Hitchcock Coit is one of the more eccentric characters in the history of North Beach and Telegraph Hill. Coit is well-known as a volunteer fire-fighter and the benefactor for the construction of Coit Tower, a local monument in the shape of a fire-hose.

Coit had a special relationship with the fire-fighters having been rescued from a fire at the age of eight. By fifteen, she was riding the Knickerbockeer Engine Co. 5. and as an adult became an honourary firefighter.

Her other eccentricities included smoking cigars and wearing trousers. Coit was an avid gambler and often dressed like a man in order to gamble in the male-only establishments that dotted North Beach.

Coit died in San Francisco in 1929. Coit Tower is built on the site of the first west coast telegraph, a semaphore completed in 1849. She commissioned another neighbourhood landmark, a statue of three fire-fighters on the south-west corner of Washington Square Park.