05.07.23: Church near a hill

Houses on San Francisco's Russian Hill serve as a background for the twin spires of Saints Peter and Paul Church, located on Filbert Street. The image was taken from Telegraph Hill, beside Coit Tower.

Whenever I visited San Francisco I would usually do a morning run or an afternoon walk along the Embarcadero, an area along San Francisco Bay. There’s a reason for that … besides the nice view of the bay. The Embarcadero is flat, something that can’t be said about the rest of San Francisco.

People often refer to the “Seven Hills of San Francisco” (Telegraph Hill, Nob Hill, Russian Hill, Rincon Hill, Mount Sutro, Twin Peaks and Mount Davidson), but in reality the city has 47 named hills. Many are very steep and difficult to walk. Some are on the cable car routes that provide transportation from sea level to the peak, making them more easily accessible, but not for walking.

Believe me, because I’ve walked a number of those hills when I’ve been in San Francisco, trying to get some exercise while I chased photographs. I’ve alway been in good condition, but San Francisco always sent me home with very sore legs.

The many hills in San Francisco provide scores of interesting hilltop scenes for photography.

I photographed this scene during a 2008 visit to the city after climbing Telegraph Hill. This photo — showing the twin spires of Saints Peter and Paul Church, located on Filbert Street, with houses on Russian Hill in the background — wasn’t my goal as I trudged up Telegraph Hill. I knew the peak of the hill provided an excellent view for photographing Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay. And Coit Tower, a 210-foot Art Deco tower dedicated to volunteer firemen, also stands atop Telegraph Hill, so I planned to get a couple of photographs of that.

As I was preparing to descend Telegraph Hill after getting the photos I wanted I stopped to look at the spires of Saints Peter and Paul and liked how they seemed to blend with the checkerboard of structures on Russian Hill in the background. The late-morning sun illuminated the spires while clouds blocked most of the sunlight from hitting Russian Hill in the background. I grabbed a quick shot, then worked my way down the hill.

When I returned home a few days later and was checking through photos I saw that I had a nice photograph of Alcatraz Island. My photos of Coit Tower were OK, but not particularly attention-getting. Then I saw this shot of the twin spires and really liked how it looked. It’s one of my favorite San Francisco photos.

The church was built in 1884, but was destroyed in the Great Quake of 1906. The current building was completed in 1924.

The church has been featured in a number of movies: two Clint Eastwood films — Dirty Harry, as the scene of a sniper attack, and The Dead Pool; Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments, while the church was under construction in 1923; What’s Up, Doc?, as the site where characters played by Barbra Streisand and Ryan O’Neal borrowed a VW Beetle during a car chase; and Sister Act, a movie that filmed a number of scenes in the church. And baseball great Joe DiMaggio’s funeral was held at the church.