Coit Tower was constructed in 1933 at the request of Lillie Hitchcock Coit for whom the tower was named. Coit was one of those eccentric characters that dot the history of San Francisco and make it the interesting city that it has always been. She was a gender-bending rough-and-tumble type of woman who smoked cigars, gambled avidly and lived raucously. The fact that she came from money and married into more of it helped make her behavior more acceptable to others.