By Therese Poletti

When a big, luxurious movie palace opened on Ocean Avenue in November, 1931—still early in the Great Depression—the green and red neon glow from its striking 146-foot Art Deco tower made it seem as if Christmas had arrived early.

The residents of the neighborhoods and winding enclaves West of Twin Peaks welcomed the $500,000 El Rey Theater with open arms.

“To me, it seemed like a neighborhood Fox Theater,” said Frank Grant, 86, a native San Franciscan now living in Hillsboro, Ore., referring to the now-demolished San Francisco Fox on Market Street. He and his younger brother Charles would often go to the El Rey from the Parkside. “It was a great escape from the worries of the day.”

True to its name, the El Rey was indeed a king of neighborhood movie houses, with seats for about 1,800, an especially ambitious venture as the economy hit the skids after the Crash of ‘29. When the El Rey Theater opened on Saturday night, November 14, 1931, its towering presence was meant to anchor a burgeoning retail pocket of Ocean Avenue. After closing as a movie theater in 1977 during a dark decade of urban change, the now salmon-colored building still stands today, rescued by the Voice of Pentecost 34 years ago, and avoiding the fate of other shuttered, single-screen theaters.

Its name perhaps is indicative of the chutzpah of its original owner, local theater operator Samuel H. Levin, who decided to build the theater on the then-untapped commercial block of Ocean Avenue. In November, 1928, Levin first contacted local architect Timothy Pflueger about building a neighborhood theater in Mount Davidson Manor, across Ocean Avenue from the young Ingleside Terraces sub-division, built on the site of a former race track. A month later, he changed his mind and asked Pflueger to put his plans on hold, perhaps realizing that a commercial district needed to be more built up before he went forward.

“Levin in, says he has made some definite decisions, i.e. not to build a theater now, to build only stores,” Pflueger wrote in his office datebooks in 1928. Pflueger, a native who grew up in the Mission District, was becoming a well-known architect during the building boom of the Roaring Twenties. His firm, Miller & Pflueger had designed the city’s first high-rise skyscraper, the Telephone Building, and two local neighborhood theaters, the Castro and the Alhambra on Polk Street. Two other theaters, the Senator in Chico and the State in Oroville, more Moderne in design, had just opened several months before Levin called. In the late 1930s, Pflueger would also design the first main building at San Francisco City College, among the many works in the firm’s vast portfolio.

In the 1920s, West of Twin Peaks was growing as an affordable bedroom community. Suburban residential parks were carved out by savvy real estate developers, in anticipation of the opening of the Twin Peaks Tunnel in 1918. Beginning in 1911, the vast acreage south of Mount Davidson once owned by Adolf Sutro was sold and parceled off. Developers began mapping out separate, charming “residence parks” that exist today.

But the commercial district of Ocean Avenue where the El Rey stands was slower to develop, perhaps tainted by its earliest associations with drinking and betting. Previously known as Ocean House Road, or Old Ocean Road, in the mid-1890s, a special Southern Pacific train traveled through an alley in the trees of the Sutro Forest, taking passengers to the front gates of the Ingleside track at Ashton Avenue. The earliest enterprises along Old Ocean Road were road houses patronized by gamblers.

“They had high hopes for it but it started as a strip with seven saloons,” said Woody LaBounty, co-founder of the Western Neighborhoods Project who is working on a book about the history of Ingleside Terraces. “It was a watering hole strip for the race track.”

That began to change after the racetrack closed and it was turned into a refugee camp after the 1906 earthquake. In 1910, the Urban Realty Improvement Co., led by Joseph Leonard, bought the racetrack land south of Ocean Avenue and developed the 148-acres into Ingleside Terraces while St. Francis Wood, Forest Hill and other subdivisions were being built. Developers wooed buyers with enticing newspaper ads and news copy gushed about fresh air, poppies and handsome, reasonably priced homes.

It’s easy to see why Levin saw the untapped potential. The commercial blocks closest to the theater were still mostly undeveloped when he initially approached Pflueger. Levin already operated several neighborhood theaters in the San Francisco Theatres Inc. chain, including the Coliseum, the Alexandria, the Harding, and the Metropolitan, with Michael A. Naify, vice president. Levin had also opened a theater, the first Balboa, on Ocean and Faxon in Westwood Park, not far from the proposed El Rey site, in December 1922, but it closed in 1932, after the El Rey opened.

In 1930, Levin and Naify decided to proceed with the project, which would include stores flanking the entrance to the theater. Even though the stock market had crashed, the boldest of theater operators saw a need for escapist, cheap entertainment. Pflueger and his firm were already working on the Paramount Theater in Oakland and they would soon be hired by the Nassers, who owned the Castro, to design a theater in downtown Alameda.

As a result, the design of these three theaters, especially their interiors, is in the same Moderne, now called Art Deco, style. The Paramount, a far larger theater originally designed with 3,600 seats, was on a grander scale since its client was the studio and theater operator, Paramount Publix. The materials used at the Paramount were slightly higher quality compared with the faux gold leaf used in detailing the bas reliefs and ornament on the walls of the Alameda and possibly the El Rey.

The 1931 opening of the El Rey was heralded with big ads and news stories that described its “magnificent tower.” The stepped tower was topped with a flaring beacon, a built-in klieg light announcing the theater’s presence but technically was designed to warn airplanes of the tower in the often fog-shrouded neighborhood. The San Francisco Examiner described the tower as “sentinel-like in the midst of a new business block,” and said it was “destined to become a landmark by day and beacon star by night.”

In one of the few descriptions of the interior, the San Francisco Chronicle described the lobby as “richly-toned in black and gold, with a complete gallery of mirrors extending the height of the side walls.” According to blueprints, Pflueger first drew a series of masks, likely to represent comedy and drama, to be cast in plaster bas reliefs on the auditorium sidewalls, but that idea was scratched. A small part of the auditorium ceiling is still today covered with lacelike metal fins used more liberally and artistically at the Paramount.

Two grand staircases led from the lobby to the mezzanine, where patrons found a smoking room and other conveniences.

A rare photo of the interior taken in 1947 from the collection of theater historian and author Jack Tillmany shows a mural on the wall of the smoking room and specially designed angular, plush furniture. An even larger mural depicting modern transportation modes, a popular theme in the 1930s, graced another wall, according to collector Mark Santamaria.

“It was beautiful,” said Irene Kettler, 91, who worked as an usherette just after World War II. A long-time resident of Westwood Park, Kettler said in the 1940s and 1950s the neighborhood was like a small town. “We had a policeman who would walk up and down Ocean Avenue and usually they would come in to check if everything was all right, around closing time. On many, many nights I had a police officer walk me home.”

In the early days of the El Rey, the theater was home to the El Rey Food Shop, and a drug store. In the 1940s, a beauty shop and a dress shop occupied its retail spots. The base of the facade was originally faced with dark marble, probably black, highlighted with horizontal strips of stainless steel or chrome. Above the marquee, an unusual pattern of concrete blocks formed patterns of diamonds and vertical zigzags.

John Pflueger, a nephew of Tim Pflueger, lived in Westwood Park before moving up to a house his father Milton designed on Robinhood Drive. He remembers Ocean Avenue and the El Rey in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

“My father took me to a movie every Friday night. We went to the El Rey all the time.” Pflueger, who is also an architect now in Sonoma, said he was too young to notice the architecture, but he remembered the El Rey as a better theater than the others he went to, including the Empire in West Portal and the Parkside on Taraval. “I was a kid just excited to go see a movie and get some popcorn and stuff.”

During the counter-culture movement of the late 1960s, the first Gap store opened in El Rey’s retail space at Ocean and Fairfield Way, where inside the pop-painted storefront Doris and Don Fisher sold jeans and record albums. The neighborhood had started to change and at the same time, television was having an impact on movie theaters.

“I don’t think it was ever a premier retail strip,” said LaBounty. “I think the El Rey was a little over optimistic.” After Stonestown opened in 1952, “it was a harder place to do business,” he added. After the war, some of the residential parks witnessed a flight to the suburbs that was also occurring across the U.S. In 1976, the Chronicle described Ocean Avenue as on the “brink of ragged change,” with a Safeway about to close. In a return to the area’s saloon roots, there were “eight stripped-down liquor stores” over eight blocks. “There are empty parking places in front of older stores and only a handful of shoppers at noon,” the Chronicle reported.

According to Tillmany, the owners of the theater, then known as UA California Theaters, closed the theater in 1976, but “some fast talking entrepreneurs convinced them that its future was as a revival house” and UACT reopened the El Rey, after a $10,000 rehab. “The results were total disaster,” Tillmany said in an email. “The films they selected didn’t draw flies, and a dozen customers sitting in the vast expanses of mighty El Rey looked like lost children.” One film Tillmany saw in its last year was “Murders in the Zoo.”

The theater closed a year later. Its last hurrah as a theater appears to have been as host of a four-day Hookers Film Festival at the end of March, 1977 for COYOTE, the prostitutes’ rights organization founded by Margo St. James. That year, Marilyn Gazowsky, the founder of the Voice of Pentecost church who lives nearby, saw on the marquee that the theater was for sale. She believes she prevailed as the buyer because she was the only bidder who managed to get in touch with the owners.

“The young fellows who put it up there mixed up two of the numbers,” said Gazowsky, now 90, who still teaches at the Voice of Pentecost Academy once a week. “So United Artists never got a call. When my real estate man called, that was the first call.” Her church was only 11 years old at the time, but she had saved enough for a down payment on the bargain price of $365,000. The church holds services in the El Rey today, having done significant remodeling, with Gazowsky’s son Richard now its pastor.

Later this month, the church will convert once more to a theater on the evening of November 19, to celebrate its anniversary with a fundraiser for the Geneva Car Barn and Powerhouse. The Academy Award-nominated film, “The Smiling Lieutenant,” shown as the main feature at the gala opening in 1931, will be seen again in the theater’s auditorium. Eighty years later, the reinvented El Rey is a survivor in changing times.

Therese Poletti is a San Francisco based journalist and author of Art Deco San Francisco: The Architecture of Timothy Pflueger, published by Princeton Architectural Press.

While the monumental El Rey Theatre building deserves a celebration for the 80th anniversary of its opening on November 14, 1931, it was not the first theater in the neighborhood. A few blocks east on Ocean Avenue stood a humbler cinema, one that never received much respect from its creator—after opening the pioneer movie house of the area he first gave its name away, then lured off its audience with a grander creation.

In the early 1920s, San Francisco theater operator Samuel H. Levin was riding high with the motion picture industry. Movies had risen from a nickelodeon novelty to become one of the nation’s primary sources of casual entertainment. New motion picture studios, just then forming in Southern California, would end up averaging 800 film releases a year by the end of the decade. Initially opening at larger theaters on Market Street, most movies moved on to second and third runs at cozier neighborhood theaters. A Russian immigrant, Samuel Levin had run a shooting gallery arcade business in the early 1900s before finding success building and operating these outlying neighborhood venues. By 1922, he already had the Haight, the Coliseum in the Richmond District, and the Elite on Sacramento Street (now the Vogue). Seeing a new market in the growing Westwood Park and Ingleside neighborhoods, Levin announced the building of a new theater at 1634 Ocean Avenue on the northeast corner of Faxon Avenue. The “Balboa” would open its doors on Saturday, December 23, 1922.

Levin’s architects were brothers James and Merritt Reid, who would end up designing the majority of San Francisco’s neighborhood theaters. At the time, many of the new commercial buildings along Ocean Avenue were being designed in popular Spanish-Colonial and Mission Revival styles, and while the Reid Brothers laid out a typical L-shaped plan for the Balboa, they gave it a façade of stucco with a decorated stepped parapet that called to mind Mission bell towers from California’s colonial past. A humble arched marquee hung over the entry with a center ticket booth. Small storefronts with transoms ran from the theater entry west to the corner. The San Francisco Chronicle identified the style as “of the rambling Spanish type,” and noted that it was decorated in “cheerful tints.” Probably in recognition of the often-foggy climate, Levin and the Reid Brothers installed a large open fireplace in the lobby.

Levin played up the fireplace and advertised the Balboa as “An Ideal Home Theater,” promising to serve “the great residential districts West of Twin Peaks with entertainment appropriate for the entire family.” Levin seemed particularly concerned about the appearance of propriety for the “home-loving people” of the area, and was careful to use the word “wholesome” in all statements and advertisements. This may have been in reaction to the Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle trials, the last of which had ended just in April of that year. Arbuckle, one of Hollywood’s best-loved comedians, was charged with manslaughter after a woman he caroused with died in his San Francisco hotel room. Newspapers played up alleged Hollywood orgies and debauchery, and the whole movie business was trying to shake off a bad reputation.

No formal dedication of the theater was made on its opening night. The doors opened at 7:00 p.m. and after a Christie comedy short (“That Son of a Sheik”), a Pathe newsreel, and a Tony Sarg cartoon, the first main feature at the Balboa Theater had Charles Ray starring in “A Tailor-Made Man.” He didn’t stay long. Programs were rotated through neighborhood theaters frequently, up to four times a week. Two days later, Lionel Barrymore replaced Ray on the screen in “The Face in the Fog.”

The Chronicle reported “very great crowds” the first weekend, but Levin and his family quickly moved on, planning new and larger movie houses. The very-large Alexandria opened months later. The Harding followed in April 1926, but just before, on February 7, 1926, Levin opened a movie house on outer Balboa Street with a familiar-sounding name. In an ineffective attempt to differentiate the new movie house with the Ocean Avenue venue, Levin called it the “New Balboa Theater.” The confusion of two Levin-run Balboa Theaters five miles apart ended when the original cinema on Ocean Avenue finally got a name change to the Westwood.

In 1931, Levin began planning for the giant El Rey Theater. In nine short years, the district and movies had leaped forward. The trees of Sutro’s forest had been thinned for new homes in Westwood Highlands and Monterey Heights and the potential movie-going public had grown immensely in the West of Twin Peaks area. Along with the increased audience came increased expectations for the film experience. Five years after the opening of the first Balboa theater, Al Jolsen’s “The Jazz Singer,” the first major picture with synchronized dialogue, signaled the end of the silent picture era. The era of the gilded “movie palace” had been introduced. Audiences expected bigger and better, while all the Westwood née Balboa had to offer was a cozy fireplace in the lobby.

Levin was a businessman determined to give the public what it wanted. The El Rey was grand, sleek, an exemplar of neon-light alchemy, moderne architecture, arena seating, and stylish interior design. The Westwood up the street, with its small size and sparse Spanish trimmings, seemed quaint and antiquated just nine years after its opening. The Westwood was a PalmPilot, the El Rey an iPhone 4s.

The Westwood and its cozy fireplace closed in 1932. The building was demolished for a grocery store and a Walgreens stands on the site today.

For a rare glimpse of the Westwood in some promotional newsreel, go to http://www.youtube.com/outsidelandsvideos and click on “Ocean Avenue in 2003 and 1922.”

Woody LaBounty is a historian and author. His book, Carville-by-the-Sea: San Francisco’s Streetcar Suburb, is available at www.carvillebook.com. Visit www.outsidelands.org to learn about his Western Neighborhoods Project.

By Jon Bechtol

Students from Out of Site Center for the Arts are designing a “parklet”—which converts a parking space into a mini-park—to be built in front of Mama Art Cafe next year.

Mama Art Cafe, located at 4754 Mission St., has worked in conjunction with Out of Site and the Excelsior Action Group towards putting in a parklet since July. Construction should begin by early 2012.

Out of Site Program Director Raffaella Falchi said the final design will be completed by Dec. 10.

“The biggest obstacle has been incorporating all the different ideas and feedback from all the students in the class, the owner of the cafe and members of the community into the design,” Falchi said.

For the students, the best part of the project has been “designing and building a project that will be available for the public,” Falchi said. “They are working to address real design issues, like how to promote community engagement in their design and how to discourage tagging and littering.”

Construction of the project will cost around $7,000 to $8,000. Funding has been set aside from a beautification program announced by Mayor Ed Lee’s office to give storefronts in the Excelsior a “facelift” and construct the parklet. Funds from the beautification program must be spent by March 31, 2012, meaning the building process will be completed by late April at the latest, barring any unforeseen obstacles with the permit and funds.

The Excelsior Action Group has submitted a place holder design to the city and has received a commitment from the city for the permit, which will remain on hold until the design is complete. By the end of this year, all necessary parts should be a step closer towards establishing the parklet.

On Ocean Avenue, Fog Lifter Cafe owner Jawad Swirky would like to work with the city to build a parklet on Ashton Avenue, with the idea that it would be protected from Ocean Avenue’s notorious wind.

His idea for the design includes four benches, which would provide nice outdoor seating. Mr. Swirky made inquiries to turn this idea into a reality and is hopeful a parklet will come together in the near future.

The first San Francisco parklet came about in 2005 as an experiment. Since then, they have generated much support in the city resulting in a booming of parklet proposals to the Pavement to Parks program and the idea that these parklets may become more permanent than temporary.