Timothy Pflueger – Public Art and Architecture from Around the World

The Royal Theater – Another Lost Gem

Posted by Cindy on November 5, 2013

Nov 052013

1529 Polk Street
Nob Hill

The Royal Theatre was built in 1916 and began its life as a Nickelodeon. Originally designed by the Reid Brothers for the same family that owned two other theaters in San Francisco, the Castro and the Alhambra. It was completely remodeled by Timothy Pflueger during the mid-1930’s for the Nasser Brothers chain which operated it at the time.

The theater contained 1515 seats when it opened.

As time passed Polk Street became run-down, but still the theater’s vertical sign was a local landmark. The same decorative motif found on the front also gracefully decorated the organ grilles.

The Royal Theatre was demolished in June of 2003 except for the facade and a few of the architectural elements, which were incorporated into the six-storied housing unit constructed on the site.

Two of San Francisco’s most prominent architects, James William Reid (1851-1943) and his brother Merritt J. Reid (1855-1932), created a number of San Francisco landmarks during the “City Beautiful” period.

In 1886, the founders of the Coronado Beach Company invited the Reid Brothers to San Diego to design the Hotel Del Coronado. When it opened in 1888, it was the largest resort hotel in the world and the first to use electrical lighting. One year later John D. Spreckels, who was investing heavily in San Diego, bought a one-third interest in the company. Spreckels eventually took over as owner of the hotel when the builders were unable to repay a loan to him. The ‘Del’, as it is affectionately known, was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1971 and further designated a National Historic Landmark in 1977.

In 1889, both James and Merritt were made Fellows of the American Institute of Architects. That year Merritt opened an office in San Francisco. He was later joined by James.

From their San Francisco office, in 1892, the Reid Brothers designed the first steel-frame building west of Chicago, for the Portland Oregonian newspaper.

The Reid Brothers became known for their Classical Revival mansions. The Reid Brothers essentially became the Spreckels family architects, designing several mansions for them. The firm designed the Spreckels Car House at 2301 San Jose (1899-1901), known today as the Geneva Car Barn and now San Francisco Landmark #180.

The Reid Brothers are perhaps best known for many classic movie theaters, including the Coliseum Theater (745 Clement, 1918), the Alexandria Theater (5400 Geary, 1923), the Metropolitan (2055 Union, 1924), the Balboa Theatre (3630 Balboa Street, 1926), the Grand Lake Theater in Oakland (1926), the Fox in Redwood City, and Golden State Theatre in Monterey (1926).

The Reid brothers worked in San Francisco until 1932, when Merritt Reid died and James, a founder of the San Francisco Opera Company, turned full-time to his hobbies of oil painting and music.

Timothy Pflueger has appeared in this site before. He is responsible for the designs that you see in these photographs.

Puttin on the Ritz

Posted by Cindy on May 28, 2013

May 282013

Ritz Carlton
600 Stockton Street
Chinatown

Heralded as a “Temple of Commerce” when it opened in September 1909, the massive, 17-columned building spanning Stockton Street between California and Pine Streets, has been expanded five times and is now one of San Francisco’s best examples of neo-classical architecture.

The original structure, an 80′ x 80′ white cube with four giant engaged Ionic columns and rich filigree, revived the neo-classical architectural style popular with early 20th-Century financial institutions. It was designed by Napoleon Le Brun and Sons of New York to be Metropolitan Life Insurance Company’s Pacific Coast headquarters.

Metropolitan Life commissioned the building after the 1906 earthquake and fire destroyed the company’s offices and records in the Wells Fargo Building at Second and Mission Streets.

The original building was built to house the life insurer for a decade, but had to be expanded only five years after it opened. Miller and Colmesnil, a San Francisco architectural firm, bid $127,000 and won the contract to design two symmetrical wings with balconies. The wings were constructed in conjunction with the Stockton Tunnel, which links Union Square to Chinatown. Concrete piers were sunk beneath the tunnel floor to prevent the building’s foundations from shifting. The 28-foot wide wings, opened in 1914, more than doubled Metropolitan Life’s office space.

In 1916, Metropolitan Life purchased the lot north of the expanded building on California and Stockton Streets from the Episcopal Diocese of California. The second expansion, designed this time by prominent San Francisco architects J.R. Miller and Timothy Pflueger, (who has appeared many times in this website) duplicated the original Le Brun “temple.” Seventeen Ionic columns support an entablature of winged hourglasses and lion’s heads.

A triangular pediment with a dramatic tableau of nine larger-than-life figures crowns the portico over the building’s entrance. Sculpted in 1920 by Haig Patigian, the terra cotta figures symbolize the American Family “protected” by a winged allegorical figure representing “Insurance.” Patigian, can be found many times throughout this website.

The economic boom of the 1920s escalated the company’s business, triggering the building’s third expansion.

This wing continued the building’s neo-classical style using glazed terra cotta tiles, decorative winged hourglasses and lion’s heads. Because of Pine Street’s steep grade, the wing is seven floors on the downhill end and meets the original building’s main floor at the Pine Street wing’s fourth floor. Dedicated in 1930, the wing gave the building an “L” shape.

The building’s fourth addition in 1954 included the California Street wing and central garden courtyard. Designed by Thomsen and Wilson of San Francisco, this steel-frame, terra cotta clad addition is identical to the Pine Street wing and gave the building its “U” shape. Thomas Church, a renowned local landscape architect, designed the ornamental garden courtyard. Each enlargement maintained the original structure’s detailing and materials, making its elegant facades virtually seamless.

In 1973, Metropolitan Life relocated its Pacific Coast headquarters and Cogswell College acquired the building for its campus.

In 1985 Cogswell College again relocated. For the next three years, the building’s offices housed several small businesses on monthly and yearly leases. The nearly vacant building deteriorated. Its extensive renovation restored this landmark to its original beauty. It opened in April 1991 as the Ritz Carlton.

The building was named a San Francisco city landmark in 1984 and listed as Architecturally Significant.

The Movie Palaces of Mission Street

Posted by Cindy on February 23, 2013

Feb 232013

The Mission District

Before Netflix, streaming videos and television, most people got their entertainment at a vaudeville/movie theater. These “palaces” were places to see and be seen. The Mission district was the home to at least five theaters whose marquees still can be seen amongst the graffiti and signage that marks the street.

Of these theaters, the El Capitan Theater was the crown jewel. Opened on June 29, 1928, it seated 2578 patrons.

The El Capitan was designed by famed theater designer Gustave Albert Lansburgh. Lansburgh was the principal architect of theaters all along the west coast from 1900 to 1930. The El Capitan was built for a group of businessmen, Ackerman, Harris and Oppen, who managed several San Francisco theaters.

Lansburgh, a graduate of UC Berkeley and a draftsman for Bernard Maybeck, gave the El Capitan a Spanish Colonial Revival interior with a Churrigueresque or Mexican Baroque façade.

Spanish Colonial Revival Architecture was born as a result of the Panama-California Exposition (held in San Diego in 1915), and became a style movement in the United States from 1915 to 1931. It is a hybrid style based on the architecture from the early Spanish colonization of North and South Americas. It started in California and Florida, which had the ideal climate for Mediterranean-inspired homes and remains popular to this day.

The style is usually marked by the use of smooth plaster and stucco walls with cast concrete ornamentation. Other characteristics often include small porches or balconies, tall double-hung windows, canvas awnings, decorative iron, ornamental tile work and arcades.

Churriqueresque, or Mexican Baroque was named after Spanish sculptor and architect Jose Benito de Churriquera. The style emerged in the 17th century and is marked by extremely expressive and florid decoration. It is normally found on the main entrance façade of a building.

Not only was the El Capitan the most opulent of the many Mission Street theaters, it was also the second largest movie theater in town. It was the first to bring second-run films in wide-screen cinema scope to the Mission, and did so until the fall of 1953. (Second run films are often shown in less popular venues after opening in larger well-known theaters; these theaters keep a larger share of the ticket fees and often charge a lower ticket price.)

Sadly decreasing revenue-due to the advent of television-coupled with the large operating costs of such a grand theater, the El Capitan closed on July 24, 1956. The next year it tried for a second life, reopening on May 1, 1957, with reduced prices, but to no avail. The theater was permanently closed before the year was out.

The final indignity to the El Capitan was its gutting in 1964. The grand Churriqueresque entry way now serves as a portal to a large parking lot.

The Wigwam was opened at 2555 Mission Street in 1913 by Joe Bauer. Al Jolson always played here when he was in town. The theater became the New Rialto (1930-1947) then the Crown (1947-1974), and finally ended its life as the Cine Latino when it closed in 1990.

At 2465 Mission Street stands the Majestic Theater. This two-story, 870-seat theater opened in April 1912. A 1937 name change to “The Tower” accompanied a remodel in a Streamline Moderne style by architect S. Charles Lee. Lee was another of the celebrated and prolific theater architects of his generation, and a huge proponent of Streamline Moderne and Art Deco in theater design. The theater closed in 1996.

The Grand (2665 Mission Street) opened in 1940. Designed by Alexander A. Cantin (an Oakland native and one of the first licensed architects in California) and A. MacKenzie Cantin, the Grand showed third-run films to a potential audience of 850 people. The theater closed in 1988.

The New Mission is the last on our tour. The New Mission was designed by the Reid brothers, the greater Bay Area’s most prolific designers of vaudeville and movie theaters. Built in 1915, it had 2000 seats. In 1932, Timothy Pflueger designed a renovated New Mission in an Art Deco Style. The fate of this movie house has remained in limbo since it closed in 1993. Since then, the “Save-New-Mission” preservation group has worked actively to see that the palace does not disappear. Its fate is still unknown as of the publication of this article.