Who is Lillie Coit?

A woman who chased fire engines, a saloon that stood on this corner for a generation, a set of keys handed over in 2017, and nine years of getting the door open. It is one long story, and we kept the receipts.

The woman

Born in West Point, New York, in 1843, and brought here as a child, in the years when the city burned regularly and volunteer companies fought it with hand-drawn carts.

Lillie Hitchcock Coit ran with Knickerbocker Engine Company No. 5 in a city that burned down regularly and did not expect a girl to do anything about it. They made her an honorary member. She signed her name with the number five after it for the rest of her life.

She smoked cigars in public when women did not. She wore trousers to get into places that would not take her otherwise. She gambled in men’s clubs and in North Beach saloons. She was difficult, generous, and uninterested in what anyone thought.

She married Howard Coit, the caller of the Stock Exchange, and left him in 1880. In 1903 a cousin walked into her rooms at the Palace Hotel with a gun and shot a friend dead in front of her. She spent much of what followed in Europe, and came home to die here in 1929.

When she died she left a third of her estate to the city, for the purpose of adding to its beauty. The city built a tower on Telegraph Hill in 1933 and filled it with paintings of Californians at work — longshoremen, cannery hands, clerks, farmers. The tower is a third of a mile uphill from this corner.

The Washbag

From 1973 to 2010 this was a saloon nobody called by its real name.

Rose Evangelisti sold her bar on this corner in 1973, and that autumn Ed Moose, Mary Etta Moose and Sam Deitsch opened the Washington Square Bar & Grill in it. Herb Caen called it the Washbag in his column and the name stuck, over Moose’s objection, for the rest of its life.

The bar stood at the back, in the far corner away from the windows. Tables ran along the walls and into the windows over the square, and the walls carried thirty years of other people’s photographs. It closed in August 2010, on the day Ed Moose died.

We kept the bones. The Mezzanine was not there — we built it.

The Petite Lil’s years

Everyone thought we would open in 2018.

It did not. Permits, a pandemic, and a refusal to open something half-finished. Nine years is a long time to hold a lease on a building you cannot use.

In February 2023 we opened Petite Lil’s, a precursor to Lillie Coit’s and a preview of it, serving oysters and tinned fish while paint swatches were still on the walls behind the guests. It ran for three years on word of mouth and a nightly oyster deal, and it is the reason the neighborhood already knew us before the sign went up.

Petite Lil’s is finished, not gone. What it taught us about staying open late is the standard now.

Who was here before us

Five names have been over this door, and the Washbag name went up three times under three different sets of owners. They fed this neighborhood long before we did.

Rose Evangelisti’s barto 1973North Beach knew her as Rose Pistola.

Washington Square Bar & Grill1973–2000Ed Moose, Mary Etta Moose and Sam Deitsch for seventeen years, then sold on. Herb Caen called it the Washbag in his column and the name stuck.

Cobalt Tavern2000–2001New owners bought it and painted it blue at the height of the dot-com boom.

Washington Square Bar & Grill2001–2008The blue period failed and the old name went back up. The doors closed on 1 January 2008.

Washington Square Bar & Grill2009–2010Liam and Susan Tiernan restored it and reopened in March 2009. It closed in August 2010, the same day Ed Moose died.

Bottle Caplate 2011–2014A bar under a new name.

the Square2014–2017Teague Moriarty and Matt McNamara took Moose’s own name for the place and used it one last time.

One corner, 168 years

1858

Lillie Coit hauls the hose cart up Telegraph HillShe is fifteen, and she drops her school books to do it. Knickerbocker Engine Co. No. 5 make her an honorary member, and she wears the badge the rest of her life.

1929

Lillie Coit leaves the city a third of her estateAbout $118,000, “for the purpose of adding to the beauty of the city which I have always loved.” Coit Tower goes up four years later.

1973

Ed Moose opens the Washington Square Bar & GrillWith his wife Mary Etta and his partner Sam Deitsch, in Rose Evangelisti’s old bar. Herb Caen christens it the Washbag in his column; Moose hates the name and calls it the Square until the day he dies.

The Washington Square Bar & Grill, 1970s

1987

The Washbag does more business per seat than any other restaurant in San FranciscoThree deep at the bar. A house softball team called Les Lapins Sauvages, written up by Caen as though they were a major-league club.

1990

The Mooses sell, and the Washbag changes hands until it closesMoose and Deitsch sell and open Moose’s across the square. The Washbag runs another decade under other hands.

2010

The Washbag closes, the day Ed Moose diesA third iteration lasts a year and a half. The closure notice goes up on 12 August 2010 — the same day Ed Moose died. The building starts changing hands: Bottle Cap, then the Square, then nothing.

2017

Nick Floulis takes the keys to 1707 PowellNick Floulis, a North Beach native, takes the keys in November and says the restaurant will open next year. From 24 November a Christmas pop-up called Deck the Halls runs in the empty dining room through New Year, with Ken Luciano and Shaher Misif.

2018

A four-alarm fire takes the building across the streetSt Patrick’s night. 659 Union burns across from the park, damaging ten businesses and displacing eight residents. It is the first of the delays. The lot is still empty.

2021

A lease, a pandemic, and a build that will not endA suit with the landlord, a pandemic, and a construction schedule that keeps moving.

2023

Petite Lil’s opens rather than wait for the grand opening10 February. Rather than keep waiting on a grand opening, the doors open under a smaller name with a smaller sign.

2025

Project Cioppino: the neighborhood helped finish the buildingRegulars chipped in $100 or more on a gift certificate, redeemable after the grand opening, and got a brass plaque with their name on it. The money went back into finishing the building.

2026

Flip the Switch: the sign is lit as Lillie Coit’s8–11 October. The sign is lit as Lillie Coit’s for the first time, nine years after the keys.