Just Like Old Times . . . Sort of

Renovated, Larger California Theatre Is a $58 Million Act

The main goal of the San Jose project was to preserve as much of the original architecture and detailing first created by Weeks & Day, the design firm that designed San Francisco's Mark Hopkins Hotel and Oakland's Fox Theatre. The 85,000-sq.-ft. project also featured construction of a new three-story limestone building.

By Thomas York

	Photos courtesy of Swinerton Builders

When the California Theatre in San Jose first opened its doors in 1927, residents flocked to see the latest from Hollywood-the new-fangled "talking" films along with a bit of Vaudeville.

Now, after a $58 million (construction cost) expansion and restoration that was completed in mid-September, audiences will be able to see opera and classical music, and a movie now and then, at the historic venue.

"When I was a kid, I spent every Saturday afternoon there," said Irene Dalis, 78, the general director of Opera San Jose, the theater's main tenant. "The renovation is beautiful, just beautiful. The theater is going to be one of the jewels of the South Bay."

Berkeley-based ELS Architecture and Urban Design was the designer for a three-year-long project intended to preserve the city's largest remaining theater from the golden era of movies. The Santa Clara office of Swinerton Builders served as the general contractor and Foster City-based Rudolph & Sletten provided construction-management services.

Kurt Schindler, project architect, said the project's main goal was to preserve as much of the original architecture and detailing first created by Weeks & Day, the design firm that designed San Francisco's Mark Hopkins Hotel and Oakland's Fox Theatre.

The 85,000-sq.-ft. project also featured construction of a new three-story limestone building next to the theater fronting Market Street that will house dressing rooms, rehearsal space, offices and serve as the backstage entrance.

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Schindler said the project involved construction of a new stagehouse behind the existing proscenium and stage, as well as construction of a new reinforced concrete auditorium floor and reinforced concrete ceiling.

The large stagehouse is 13-ft. deeper and 20 -ft. wider than the original, and stands more than 110-ft. tall.

The original, smaller stagehouse would have prevented Opera San Jose, from staging joint productions and exchanging expensive sets with other regional opera companies.

Schindler said other aspects of the project included deepening the old Vaudeville stage by 13 ft. and expanding the orchestra pit to hold 56 musicians, the number required for big-league operatic performances.

The auditorium and three foyers were also overhauled to accommodate the demands of modern-day live performance audiences.

"The rake of the balcony and the orchestra was redone to improve the sight lines," Schlinder said. "The audience likes to be able to see the head of the conductor, who leads everyone in operatic performances."

Rick Bishoff, senior project manager for Swinerton, said workers had to preserve decorative cast plaster ornamentation and the exterior and interior hand-painted Moorish and Navajo design motifs.

"We started at one end and moved through the structure, taking care to preserve a lot of the details," he added. "We took a lot of photographs so that we could repeat what it looked like in 1927."

Bishoff said demolition took more than a year because of the added care required in preserving the building's historic details, such as the painted stenciled ceilings and walls, a common technique in the 1920s and early '30s.

Jim Drexel, project superintendent for the Concord office of Raymond Interiors, which re-installed the ornaments and details and handled the regular dry wall and exterior cement work, said molds were made of the original ornaments before demolition began.

Subcontractor Michael H. Casey Designs of San Francisco then made new ornaments from the molds to replace those removed. The new ornaments were made from natural fiber plaster for the interior or cast stone for exterior.

"The original ornaments could not be re-used because they had become brittle from age," Drexel said.

Raymond Interiors gave carpenters and dry-wall journeymen on-the-job training so that they could properly install the ornaments and handle the plastering skills required to match original work.

Specialty subcontractors involved in the three-year-long effort featured Los Angeles-based consultant Tony Heinsbergen, whose father, A.B. Heinsbergen, had been one of the decorative designers during construction of the theater in the 1920s. Tony Heinsbergen, 75, died in February before he and his team was able to complete the final phase of the decorative painting.

EverGreene Painting Studios of New York, took over the job and deployed a team of 15 highly skilled painters on tight deadlines to finish the paint schemes to their original appearance, Schindler said.

The project was sponsored by the San Jose Redevelopment Agency, which bought the rundown theater in 1985.

David Packard, son of Hewlett-Packard founder David Packard, contributed $25 million toward the $75 million development cost. He's an avid film fan who purchased a decrepit theater in downtown Palo Alto to show classic movies.

Packard's Humanities Institute contributed two new Wurlitzer organs that will be played when silent movies are shown. The larger of the two has been installed behind the historic plaster grillwork in the main auditorium.