Telegraph Hill

The idyllic San Francisco often pictured in the movies or in coffee-table books likely includes at least one image of Telegraph Hill, a pine-topped bulb that sits above the wharves along the city’s rounded northeastern edge. Like so many other neighborhoods in this hilly city, the streets here are steep, often flanked by sidewalks that are actually steps, some of them quite pitched. Because of these inclines, traffic is light, with few drivers using the roads for anything other than accessing their homes, or going and coming from Pioneer Park and Coit Tower, which crowns this rocky outcropping like a kind of blunt-nosed rocket, standing guard, keeping silent watch over the surrounding bay.

Although this hill, one of the original seven that defined San Francisco during its Gold Rush days, is short (275 feet) by comparison to other behemoths farther inland—Mount Davidson (928 feet), Twin Peaks (910 feet), and Mount Sutro (909 feet)—it is perhaps second best known (after Nob Hill). The hill’s name comes from its Barbary Coast past, when its summit was topped by a semaphore (a device with two arms that signaled, in code, what port-bound ships were carrying in their holds). By the 1860s, when the electric telegraph rendered the semaphore obsolete (a storm knocked it over in 1870 and it was never rebuilt), the hill, whose eastern slope had been quarried extensively to provide ballast for ships leaving San Francisco and pavers for streets, began to fill in with modest homes, its higher elevations studded with working-class cottages reached by their owners via winding paths and boardwalk trails. Many of these structures, spared the conflagration that followed the great quake of 1906 owing to their owners’ tenacity, remain intact today, their distinctly simple facades a fitting contrast to the architectural extravagances that line the streets of the more affluent historic neighborhoods, such as Nob and Russian Hills, rebuilt after the disaster. Telegraph Hill thus contains the greatest concentration of pre-quake buildings in the city, many jammed side-by-side right up to the sidewalk. Stroll down any of the older lanes (Varennes, Genoa or Edith, for instance) for a taste of how claustrophobic the neighborhood likely felt in the 1860s and ’70s.

By the 1920s and ’30s, Telegraph Hill’s cheap rents had begun attracting artists and writers seeking access to the bars and coffeehouses of adjacent North Beach, which had become the hotbed of San Francisco bohemian life. Though these newcomers coexisted with their working-class neighbors, it was not long before the area became home to wealthier individuals, many of whom were civic-minded and did much to improve the neighborhood and preserve its character (while also constructing some of its nicer homes and apartment buildings).

Coit Tower is the visual focal point of Telegraph Hill. Built with funds provided by a quirky 19th-century benefactor (Lillie Hitchcock Coit, who was fascinated by firemen and often followed them to the scene of a burning building), it has an air of permanence that belies its relatively short life. Erected in 1933 as a tribute to the volunteer fire departments she so admired, its interior adorned with frescoes of Depression-era San Francisco by artists working for the WPA, the tower is often the butt of a number of jokes about firemen and their hoses. Yet it is one of San Francisco’s most recognizable monuments, and one of its most beautiful. It rises, sleek and serene, more than 200 feet from the summit of Pioneer Park. By day, it is a counterpoise in white to the burnt orange of the Golden Gate Bridge; by night, lit from below, it glows with a kind of sacred luminescence, as if to signal the purity of the fire and ashes from which San Francisco rose after its greatest calamity.

Over the decades following its tumultuous 1950s and ’60s heyday as a home to Beat Generation poets and the San Francisco Renaissance their works inspired, Telegraph Hill settled comfortably into a quiet, primarily residential area whose inhabitants guard its integrity from wanton development via such organizations as Telegraph Hill Dwellers. That the neighborhood maintains its friendly, homey feel, with few highrises and intrusive developments—in spite of the fact that it abuts the tumult of North Beach bars and restaurants and is within a short walk of the Financial District—is proof of the coherence of the tight-knit community here.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the area’s 10,000 or so residents are an almost even mix of white and Asian (each with roughly 45 percent of the total, with a mix of races making up the rest), young to middle-aged (38 is the median age), and solidly middle class (median annual household income: $70,000). The great majority (more than 80 percent) rent their homes. There aren’t many kids in residence here, a fact born out in the absence of any school, public or private, in the neighborhood (though there are a couple nearby in North Beach).

Such a large number living within a confined area necessarily means parking is difficult. Some of the mid-20th century homes and apartments have garages, though many residents park on the street (and make use of the “A” residential parking permit). Navigating the area on foot is often best achieved via the pedestrian steps that link one street to another, mid-block. Though the area doesn’t necessarily have the most steps in San Francisco, it has a number of the most notable, including the Vallejo Street Stairway, the Filbert Steps, and the Greenwich Street Stairs. The first cuts up the steep eastern side of the hill starting at Montgomery and is actually comprised of three stairways: narrow, straight ones on either side and a wider, angled staircase in the middle, surrounded by well-kept greenery. The last two sets of steps go up Telegraph Hill proper, from different starting points a block apart on Sansome Street, and cut through gardens and beautifully landscaped plots and courtyards. The trees around the Filbert Steps are the original home of the famous parrots of Telegraph Hill, actually feral red-masked parakeets, immortalized in the book and documentary, “The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill.”

For public transit, the No. 39 bus is pretty much the only choice. It wends its way up Telegraph Hill Boulevard to Coit Tower and down to Columbus and Broadway for connections to buses going to Union Square and the Financial District, or to Beach Street, for connections with the F streetcar, which runs along the Embarcadero.

According to San Francisco Police Department reports, the No. 1 crime here is (not surprisingly), disturbing the peace—generally committed by rowdy bar patrons returning to their cars after closing time in North Beach or carousing after hours in the parking lot next to Coit Tower. Burglaries are infrequent though not unheard of, and the area is not immune to car break-ins, either. Assaults are unusual, and no homicides have been committed in the last three years.

Real-estate prices in Telegraph Hill have been adversely affected by the recent downturn, according to Zephyr Real Estate, dropping by as much as one-fifth for certain single-family homes over the last two years (although condos have remained more stable in the same period). A three-bedroom, 2.5-bath single family house on Varennes Street recently listed for $1.4 million, while a two-bedroom, one-bath condo was going for $550,000. Rentals in the neighborhood, when available, tend to be pricier than elsewhere: studios are listed at $1,500, while one-bedroom, one-bath apartments start at $1,700 and can go to $4,000, depending on amenities. Many renters choose to live here for the views, and many dwellings, for sale or rent, have them, often featuring huge picture windows to capture the sweep of downtown, the waterfront and wharves, and the hills of Marin and the East Bay. It’s one of the privileges of life on this particular hill, and people willingly pay the premium.