SAN FRANCISCO —Stocks have crashed, industry is shuddering and, banks are failing. The restless unemployed soon will fill the streets. Yet in San Francisco, some crazed optimist in the Pacific Stock Exchange Tower has hired Diego Rivera to decorate a private club for stockbrokers.

Could this be the most doomed, stupid idea of all 1930? Here is Rivera, an intermittent communist who had met with Josef Stalin in Russia only two years before, perched on the scaffolding above the financial titans of Sansome Street. He’s supposed to sketch grand visions of happy, healthy California, its produce plump and shiny, its hills dotted with oil wells, the Golden State agleam with capitalism. All this, a year into the Great Depression.

What is the muralist thinking? What are the stockbrokers thinking?

Even as I stand before the mural, I can’t quite imagine. But I do feel a little closer to the 1930s, and I know I’m not the only one who has been wondering lately about those years.

The remedy is a trip to San Francisco — good not only for plain fun but for some encouraging revelations. In the face of the hard times between 1929 and 1941, all sorts of strange and wonderful creations and transformations emerged here. Murals. Bridges. Even a couple of islands.

I made it to nine Depression-era landmarks in 24 hours. As a saner, slower traveler, you easily could cover five in a weekend. Most are inexpensive or free.

1 Bay Bridge

Driving in from the Oakland airport, I crossed the Bay Bridge. It was finished in 1936, six months before the Golden Gate, and for the armada of ferry boats that used to carry as many as 50,000 commuters daily across the bay, it was the beginning of the end.

2 Coit Tower

It was 1933 when a $125,000 bequest by local philanthropist Lily Hitchcock Coit paid for a streamlined 210-foot tower on Telegraph Hill.

The commanding views would have been enough, but Coit Tower gained another dimension in 1934, when its ground floor was covered with murals by artists in the federally funded Public Works of Art Project. About 25 artists were paid about $31 a week, and the walls they left us amount to a portrait of the city 75 years ago: ferry commuters, fedoras, newspapers, high anxiety. And of course, the artists couldn’t resist peppering the imagery with a little political spice — notice the library denizen reaching for a volume by Karl Marx, and the copy of the Daily Worker high on the newsrack display.

3 Alcatraz

Although most of its buildings date to earlier years as a military prison, Alcatraz became a federal penitentiary in 1934. That meant retrofitting the place to boost it from minimum to maximum security, and the penitentiary remained in business until 1963, its notoriety spread worldwide by movies.

4 Treasure Island

From Coit Tower, look east toward the Bay Bridge, then look down to its footings on tiny Yerba Buena Island. Then check out the strange, flat, 400-acre patch of land attached to it by a causeway.

That’s Treasure Island, created from scratch to house the Golden Gate International Exposition of 1939-40. This was San Francisco’s effort to wow the world with its new bridges and artistic wonders. Unfortunately, the 1939 World’s Fair in New York gave it stiff competition.

In World War II it was a naval station. Since then, the island has lapsed into a lonely enclave of affordable apartments and toxic cleanup sites.

5 Golden Gate Bridge

For years, I had been wanting to bike across the Golden Gate Bridge, or at least bike to it. Now I finally have. You can rent a bike on Columbus Avenue from Bike and Roll or Blazing Saddles ($7 an hour and up at either spot), make your way a few blocks to Fisherman’s Wharf, then follow the shoreline bike and footpath to the south.

It’s only about 3 miles to the bridge. You pass Fort Mason, the Marina District and the grassy expanse of Crissy Field.

Construction on the bridge began in 1933 under chief engineer Joseph B. Strauss. Architect Irving F. Morrow is the one who came up with the color. (Apparently, the U.S. Navy favored a black bridge with yellow stripes.) It was completed April 19, 1937.

6 Top of the Mark

Now it’s time for a drink. Ditch the bike, put on something presentable, find your way to the top of Nob Hill and step into the posh InterContinental Mark Hopkins San Francisco. For a little reminder of our own recession, check the rates: For a high-end property with a four-diamond rating, lately they have been as low as $144 a night.

The Mark Hopkins opened in 1926, a combination of French chateau and Spanish Renaissance. In 1939, the owner, George D. Smith, converted the 19th-floor penthouse into a cash-generating cocktail lounge with a wraparound view and called it the Top of the Mark.

During the war years, it became a favorite spot for last drinks before sailors shipped out.

7 War Memorial Opera House

Just a few miles away, in the gritty Civic Center neighborhood, the War Memorial Opera House and Veterans Building (which make up the Performing Arts Center) have stood since 1932. The buildings, twins from the outside with a courtyard between them, were built to honor World War I veterans.

I caught the San Francisco Ballet performing that night, then returned the next morning to be shown a few backstage sights by veteran tour guide George F. Lucas (no, not that one). For me, the most striking stop was the Herbst Theatre (formerly known as Veterans Auditorium), where in June 1945, world leaders huddled to sign the charter creating the United Nations. The auditorium’s side walls are dominated by eight enormous paintings by celebrated landscape artist Frank Brangwyn.

8 The Beach Chalet

In a two-story Spanish Revival building known as the Beach Chalet, I found yet another batch of classic murals. In 1936, the federal Works Progress Administration hired artist Lucien Labaudt — formerly a designer of gowns and costumes for high society — as principal designer of a fresco project.

Aided by assistants, mosaic artists and wood carvers, he came up with a series of cheerful scenes: picnickers, bathers, fishermen, a guitarist and a photographer, all wedged in amid bits of local scenery, including Chinatown, City Hall and Baker Beach. If any political commentary found its way in there, I missed it.

9 Stock Exchange Tower

Now, back to Diego Rivera, stockbroker’s friend and intermittent communist.

On the 10th and 11th floors of the Pacific Stock Exchange Tower— which are the private domain of the City Club and its members — you’ll find a hall and dining area full of Art Deco details. Be sure to check out the handrails on the stairwell. Bending brass to create outlined figures, sculptor Robert Boardman Howard aimed to portray a day in the life of a stockbroker: There he is in business clothes, then a golf outfit, then top hat and tails.

This seems exactly the sort of thing that would cause Rivera to throw a fit. But artists have to earn a living, too, and this was Rivera’s first job in the U.S. He devised a 30-foot-high design for an allegory of California and used tennis star Helen Wills Moody as the model for the woman whose face would symbolize the state’s beauty and promise. He also included the oil wells, the ag workers and a couple of boys playing with a toy airplane. Not a hint of skepticism.

So there you go — a full itinerary of Depression wonders, all within about 45 minutes of one another.

If you’re like me, you’ll be startled by just how much enduring, transformative work came out of those years after the crash of ’29. But it’s a little spooky, too, to be reminded all over town that it took a world war to close the book on those hard times.

Web: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/travel/features/6364421.html