San Francisco Chronicle (Sunday)
San Francisco’s Golden Gate Theatre has been refurbished and restored to its 1922 glory.
Golden Gate Theatre premieres makeover with ‘On Your Feet!’
The grand opening of the Golden Gate Theatre — a building as massive as the old Yankee Stadium with a jeweled crown high above home plate — received a championship welcome 96 years ago. “New S.F. Playhouse to Have Continuous Vaudeville” read the banner above a photograph of it and the headline “Golden Gate Sets New Mark in Design.”
That edition of The San Francisco Chronicle from March 27, 1922, was all theater owner SHN had to go on when it undertook a complicated project to return the largest commercial theater in the Market Street corridor to its opening-night glory. There were no architectural plans or schematics or construction records to be found.
“We wanted to figure out where all this started in 1922 when there was no color photography,” says Greg Holland, chief executive officer of SHN, as he stands at the ticket window looking up at a curvaceous blue ceiling trimmed in gold paint, with chandeliers dangling overhead. “This is the result of us reading and guessing.”
The restoration of the Golden Gate took 13 months, longer than it took to build from scratch the four-story theater encased in a seven-story office building. The result will premiere Wednesday with the opening of “On Your Feet!,” the Gloria Estefan Broadway touring musical.
The modern comforts are central air conditioning, which replaces a ventilation system that stopped working in the 1970s, and the gender equalization of the restrooms. But style also counts, and that has been a challenge to pin down.
The newspaper photo of the brick and terracotta exterior shows that the five staggered “Rapunzel” balconies facing Golden Gate Avenue were there from the start. The only changes have been the addition of twin six-story
blades spelling “Golden Gate,” the subtraction of windows on the ground floor, and all that street parking for the Model T Fords.
But the interior was an unreliable narrator. Over the years, the grand lobby had been outfitted with an escalator and the auditorium chopped into two movie theaters, among other insults. Everything was in a shade of brown, chocolate being dominant, and a “historic paint technician” had to be brought in to strip eight colors in search of the original. To correct it took 20 vendors, 300 craftspeople and many more millions than the Golden Gate cost to build, which was less than $1 million.
“We believe we’d done more work on the plaster than was originally here,” Holland says during a brief Wednesday walk-through before painters sealed the place off.
The Golden Gate was designed by G. Albert Lansburgh, a San Franciscan who graduated from Lowell High School and UC Berkeley before studying architecture in Paris. When he returned, Lansburgh wore a waxed mustache and jaunty air and became a prominent designer of theaters on the West Coast. He worked for the RKO (Radio-Keith-Orpheum) circuit of theaters and also designed the interior of War Memorial Opera House and four branch libraries in San Francisco, his best showcase being the Presidio branch on Sacramento Street.
“Lansburgh invented his own architectural vocabulary,” Holland says. “We’re trying to find a balance between Art Deco and Gothic Revival.”
At 2,400 seats on two levels, the Golden Gate opened to record crowds. “Long Double Line of Showgoers Wait for Premiere of Beautiful Amusement Place Dedicated to High-Class Vaudeville,” read one headline. But that might have been the last night of double lines. Whether high-class or low, revue shows of rotating talent, as many as seven different acts a night, were already waning. Star attractions took over, but Louis Armstrong, Nat King Cole, Frank Sinatra and even a live show by the Three Stooges couldn’t save it.
In 1954, RKO gave in and leased the Gate to Cinerama for conversion to a movie palace.
The original marble staircase was
“The Golden Gate needed to find its place in the Mid-Market revitalization process.”
Greg Holland, SHN chief executive
replaced by an escalator, the first in a long period of modernization finalized when the balcony was closed off to become a second screen.
The movie theater went dark in 1972 and then flickered on and off until Feb. 19, 1976, when it closed for good. Developer Walter Shorenstein and hotelier Ben Swig had bought the building for less than $1 million, attracted by the theater office building. Shorenstein considered demolishing the theater before turning it over to his daughter, Carole J. Shorenstein, who produced the “Best of Broadway” series with partner James M. Nederlander.
“Yet another new role for the old Golden Gate,” was the weary tone of a Sunday Examiner & Chronicle column by Stanley Eichelbaum. On Dec. 27, 1979, “A Chorus Line” opened to mark the return of live theater for the first time in 25 years. It was followed by Dick Van Dyke in “The Music Man,” Rex Harrison in “My Fair Lady” and Richard Burton in “Camelot.”
But by season two, Shorenstein was fending off complaints of Tenderloin blight at Golden Gate Avenue and Taylor Street, a short setback from Market Street at Sixth Street.
“The Market Street-Tenderloin area is being revitalized,” she told The Chronicle in defense. “Look at what’s happening at the Emporium. Look at Bullock’s coming in at Fifth Street. Look at the Hilton building a new addition a few blocks away. The new theater is part of that process.”
The Golden Gate outlasted the Emporium and Bullock’s and Shorenstein’s management. Now Shorenstein Hays, she concentrates on the family theater, the Curran on Geary Street. Her daughter, Gracie Hays, wrote the history of the Golden Gate, where her mother is still a partner though no longer active in management. It has been 40 years, but the street is still the same or worse, and Holland is still talking up the same process.
“The Golden Gate needed to find its place in the Mid-Market revitalization process,” he says. He will not disclose what the project cost, but funds were freed when SHN sold the attached office building that faces Taylor Street to WeWork in 2009.
The most obvious exterior change is the installation of a digital marquee,
flanked by twin blades, which will still be wrapped and unfinished on opening night. Inside, the red velvet curtain is back to complement the painting, carpet and fixtures. For that, ELS Architecture and Urban Design of Berkeley relied on The Chronicle archive, specifically the description by Marjorie C. Driscoll.
“It suggests the outdoors, with none of the roofed-over feel that characterizes the average theater,” it read. “It is like sitting under a bit of blue sky, so effective is the color suggestion.”
Because there was no glass in the ceiling, the design team construed Driscoll’s report to mean the ceiling was painted sky blue. Ultimately, they settled on a mixture of their own making, which they call California blue.
Driscoll went on to describe the curtain as a “rich crimson velvet,” and that is what replaced the brown curtain. The flooring was a “dull gray-green carpet of luxurious softness.” The designers stopped short of dull gray. The carpeting throughout is a custom pattern of floral gold medallions against burgundy, with a tiny detail of blue to bring up the central theme.
“California Blue,” says Holland, “is now the color of the Golden Gate.”
The seats in the auditorium were replaced eight years ago, and with some removed for access by people with disabilities, it now holds 2,297, still the largest commercial theater in the city, slightly larger than its sister, the Orpheum on Market Street, two blocks away.
With both houses operational, SHN can produce a show in one while staging a show in the other, to keep the product moving for its 40,000 subscribers. The Golden Gate frees up the Orpheum for longer runs, starting with “Hamilton,” which will return in February and stay as long as there is demand.