The Union Square Theatre

160 O'Farrell St. | map |

 

Opened: October 18, 1913 as the Gaiety Theatre, a project of film star Gilbert M. "Broncho Billy" Anderson that was intended as a house for musical revues. This March 1925 photo from the Jack Tillmany collection was taken soon after the theatre had been renamed the Union Square. Earlier it had been the Hippodrome. Jack calls our attention to the fact they were putting the admission prices on the marquee.

 

The initial show was "The Candy Shop," a musical production that had been discussed in "Whispering in the Wings," an article Peter Field found on page 4 of the October 9 issue of the San Francisco Call. The theatre was on the north side of the street between Stockton and Powell, on the site of the pre-1906 Alcazar Theatre. It was just east of the location of Fischer's Theatre, the facade of which survived 1906 and had been rebuilt as Tait's restaurant. Across the street was the location of the 1909 version of the Orpheum.

 

Seating: 1,800. It was a theatre with a single balcony.

 

 

 

Architects: O'Brien and Werner. The theatre is called Anderson's Winter Garden on the drawings in the Gary Parks collection. See fifteen more images from the plans down at the bottom of the page.

The project was referred to as the Winter Garden in "Silken Surroundings For Chop Suey Service," an article located by Peter Field on page 8 of the San Francisco Call issue of June 25, 1913. Peter comments that using the name was an attempt to cash in on the fame of similarly named theatres in theatrical capitals like New York and Berlin. The name had become the Gaiety by July 30 when the Call published a page 10 article titled "Gaiety Jubilee."

Stage specifications: 

Proscenium width: 40'   

Stage depth:29' 6" from the proscenium plasterline to the back wall

Depth of "one": 7'

Stage wall to wall: 77'

Grid height: 62'

Sets of lines: 60, with the flyfloor stage right above the dressing rooms.

Number of dressing rooms: 12. Some in the basement, a star room on stage level and the rest on levels two and three stage right.

Orchestra size: 8

Power: AC only

Some of the stage data comes from the 1919 edition of "Vaudeville Trails Thru the West" where the theatre is listed as the Hippodrome. It's on Internet Archive. Thanks to Mike Hume for spotting it. They note the theatre was doing 3 shows daily with 5 on Saturdays and Sundays.

Musical revues segue to vaudeville with new names, new operators:

 

A program for Marie Dressler's "Merry Gambol" at the Gaiety, opening February 2, 1914. The program is from the Jack Tillmany collection.   

 

A c.1914 card with a scene featuring the dialect comedians Kolb & Dill in the show "Peck o' Pickles." Thanks to Art Siegel for locating the card on the site Card Cow. 

The revue business didn't go well. Peter Field comments: "Anderson, who spent something like $200,000 on the real estate and the building, planned to make the theater the center of a chain, but couldn’t make it work financially." Beginning in 1915 Ackerman and Harris were operating it as a vaudeville house renamed the Hippodrome.

A June 1915 program with Ackerman and Harris running the theatre as the Hippodrome. The program is on Calisphere from the Museum of Performance and Design Performing Arts Library.

Sometime in the late 1910s, Marcus Loew hooked up with A&H and named them his "western representatives." The theatre became advertised as Loew's Hippodrome although it was still operated by Ackerman and Harris.

A 1921 program on Calisphere from the Museum of Performance and Design Performing Arts Library.

Loew had been working with Ackerman and Harris on the State Theatre (called the Warfield by the time it opened) as well as a new house to be called the Union Square at Post and Powell, diagonally opposite the St. Francis Hotel.  This is all chronicled in an article in the September 9, 1921 issue of Variety:

Too many theatres for Loew? Thanks to Bob Ristelhueber for finding the article for a post on the BAHT Facebook page.  The aborted project was to be designed by the Reid Brothers.

Glenn Koch commented: "I wonder how many people realize that the Grand Lake Theater design was actually a recycled version of an earlier theater design that the Reid Brothers did for a theater in San Francisco that never came to fruition? A good design is a good design! The original was for the Loew's Union Square Theater from about 1922. Was to be built on the site that would later be the home to the Fitzhugh Building and which is now where Sak's Fifth Avenue is located."

Gary Parks added: "Although I'll bet if the design we know now as the Grand Lake had been done on Union Square with the Loew money, it would have been terra cotta-clad! It also would likely have been demolished by now."

 

 

A 1924 ad, with no mention of Loew, in the "Douglas '20' Police Journal," a publication of the San Francisco Police Department. Thanks to Bob Ristelhueber for finding it on Internet Archive for a post on the BAHT Facebook page.   

 

The theatre was renamed the Union Square Theatre in 1925. Thanks to Jack Tillmany for finding this article in the February 23 issue of the Examiner. The renaming was also covered on page 10 in the February 21 Chronicle which noted that "The Narrow Street" from Warner Bros. would be the initial film in the renamed theatre. They added that the new policy would be "first-run feature pictures and a musical program."

 

The opening ad on page 11 in the February 21, 1925 Chronicle. Prices were 10 cents for children, 20 cents on matinees and 30 cents for evenings, weekends and holidays. And you got the Union Square Ballet! There was also an ad announcing the opening in the February 20 Chronicle.

 

 

The "Union Square Tab" for the week of December 26, 1925. Thanks to Jack Tillmany for the item from his collection. He comments: "The Union Square Tab advertises it as 'the biggest show in America for twenty cents.' On the surface, hard to argue with that one! So why did it fail? I suspect the quality of the offering was way below par. Both George Larkin in 'Midnight Secrets' and Glenn Hunter in 'His Buddy's Wife' were independent (i.e. poverty row) productions, which would normally only have found one day bookings on a double bill at some Main Street flea pit. If the vaudeville was equally low level, it could have been pretty painful. San Francisco mainstream moviegoers had better taste & far better choices."

The back side of the "Tab" for December 26, 1925. 

 

A 1928 pass for the Union Square. Thanks to Jack Tillmany for both the pass as well as his time going through a perpetual calendar to figure out the year.  

Thanks to Bob Ristelhueber for finding this December 1928 ad featuring the Union Square. It was a post on the BAHT Facebook page. In 1925 Loew and Ackerman and Harris had parted company with West Coast Theatres taking over management of the Warfield and the Union Square staying with Ackerman and Harris.

The end of the Union Square chapter of this never-very-popular location might have been the run of "The Captive" (aka "Escape of the Captive," aka "Unguarded Girls"), an exploitation sex drama, which opened in late April 1929. On page 15 of the May 6, 1929 Chronicle there was an article that noted "The Captive" was in its third week and that the film "has been commended by certain educational authorities as a warning to wayward girls." There seem to be no Chronicle mentions of anything after that. On page 11 of the December 7, 1929 Chronicle there was an ad noting the theatre was available for lease with "Very Attractive Terms to Responsible Tenant."

It became a foreign film house called the Filmarte in 1931. The October 17, 1931 Chronicle covered the opening on page 13. The article "Filmarte Theater Opens Today" noted: "Music Film First on Classic List - The filmgoer who knows only English need no longer miss the fine points of French or German-made films for at the new International Filmarte Theater, where the pick of the foreign productions are to be exhibited, all films will be captioned in English...." A German film, "Two Hearts in Waltz Time," was the opening attraction. Thanks to Jack Tillmany for finding these Chronicle items via Newsbank.

Closing: The operation as a foreign film house met little success and it shut down as a film house in February 1934. Jack Tillmany found that the last uses of the space announced in the Chronicle were a February 1935 lecture on "The Menace of Fascism," and a March 1936 series of noon gospel meetings by the Bay Region Christian Business Men's Committee [sic].

Status: It was demolished beginning in June 1936 so O'Connor, Moffatt & Company could expand. Peter Field notes that the firm was sold to Macy's in 1948.

 

The Hippodrome in the Movies:

 

We get a look at the Hippodrome's signage in this view down O'Farrell about 40 minutes into "The West-Bound Limited" (Film Booking Office, 1923). Thanks to Jack Tillmany for the screenshot. The Orpheum, on the right, opened in 1909.

 

More exterior views:  

A c.1910 look toward Market at the site of the Gaiety. It's that vacant slot on the left just beyond Tait's Restaurant. On the right is the Orpheum, opened in 1909. It's a photo from an anonymous collector appearing on the Open SF History Project website. Open SF History also has a c.1912 photo looking toward Market St. The Tait-Zinkand Cafe seen on the left is a rebuilt version of the 1900 vintage building that was once Fischer's Theatre.

A version of the photo above appeared with a November 2016 SF Gate story "Rare, unseen photos from the Chronicle's morgue..." The Mayor's office (the source of the photo) thought this was 1915. If it were, the Gaiety Theatre would be in that vacant lot. 

 

An April 29, 1913 shot from a scrapbook of Hamilton Henry Dobbin where he notes "Bursting of a watermain causing the street to cave dropping automobiles and teams into the excavation." That's the 1909 Orpheum across the street. We're in the lot that would become the site of the Gaiety Theatre. The California State Library has two slightly different versions of the photo.

Thanks to Bob Ristelhueber for finding this magazine photo of steel going up for the theatre in 1913. It appeared as a post of his on the BAHT Facebook page.  

 
The Gaiety running films in August 1914. Thanks to Jack Tillmany for the trade magazine photo. The film was "Scuola d'eroi" from Italy which was retitled "For Napoleon and France" for a United States release.

Jack comments: "WWI broke out 28 July 1914; this film opened at the Gaiety the following week. Anti-war sentiment in the USA ran high, especially in San Francisco, from the very beginning, so much so that we managed to stay out of it the first 3 years. So I think the antagonism towards war films of any kind (even though of a historical nature such as this one), is understandable. When John Wayne's 'The Green Berets' opened at the St. Francis, Coliseum and El Rey in June 1968, it wasn't received with much enthusiasm either, 50+ years later, another reflection of widespread (to put it mildly) contemporary popular attitudes."

The Hippodrome after Marcus Loew hooked up with Ackerman and Harris as his "western representatives." It's a News Call-Bulletin photo in the San Francisco Public Library collection.

A November 1926 photo of the theatre as the Union Square from the Marilyn Blaisdell collection appearing on the Open SF History Project website. We're looking west on O'Farrell toward Powell St. That's the Orpheum on the left.

A detail from the 1926 photo above. The Alcazar Theatre is down in the next block. Thanks to Jack Tillmany for this one from his collection.

"Vaudeville Pictures All seats 20 cents." We're looking toward Market St. from Powell in this mid-to late-20s photo from the Jack Tillmany collection. He notes that we get "just a smidgen of the Orpheum and its vertical directly across the street. Busy little block, that, with Coffee Dan's (later site of Omar Khayyam Restaurant, I believe), Tait's Dancing Palace, with Ben Black's Band, etc."  

There's also a less cropped version of the photo from the Emiliano Echeverria / Randolph Brandt Collection on an Open SF History Project page.

We're looking west on O'Farrell toward Powell in the late 20s or early 30s. Note the new vertical -- and the drop in prices to 15 cents. Thanks to the Emiliano Echeverria / Randolph Brandt Collection for the photo, appearing on an Open SF History Project page.

A March 1930 photo looking west on O'Farrell. The theatre on the left with the signage saying Erlanger's Columbia is the rebranded 1909 Orpheum. Across the street is the Union Square Theatre with the Alcazar seen down in the next block. Thanks to Jack Tillmany for the photo from his collection.

 

 

Images from the plans for the theatre in the Gary Parks collection: 

 

 

A titleblock from one of the pages.  

 

A main floor plan. This was another of those layouts where, if you were going to the balcony, you had to make your decision in the ticket lobby. If you went in the main entrance doors you could only get to the main floor. Note the "sidewalk lights" called out on the plans for basement illumination.

 

 

A closer look at the ticket lobby ceiling. 

 

 

A balcony soffit detail from the floorplan. Gary comments:"I’m quite taken with the plaster grillework on the main ceiling and underneath the balcony—which has openings filled with backlit stained glass. The effect would have been enchanting!"

 

 

 

A balcony plan. 

 

 

A detail of the stage and box areas from the balcony plan. 

 

 

A reflected ceiling plan on the left and the roof plan on the right. Note the paint bridge up near the back wall of the stage.

 

 A facade elevation, including sidewalk details and the basement. 

A detail from the facade elevation. 

 

 

A section showing the stage right dressing room stack and the house left fire escapes. 

 

 

A section looking toward house left. 

 

 

A detail from the section showing the top of the stagehouse. Gary comments: "A first for the collection—actual drawings of the rooftop water tanks!"

 

 

A section detail looking toward stage right. 

 

 

A closer look at the house left proscenium boxes. That's an organ grille above the boxes. 

 

 

A detail from the section drawing showing the middle of the auditorium. 

 

 

 A section detail of the lobby end of the theatre. Thanks, Gary!

More Information: Jack Tillmany notes that David Kiehn's excellent book "Broncho Billy and the Essanay Film Company" (available from the author) provides more information about the Union Square and Anderson's involvement.

There's a page about the Filmarte on Cinema Treasures.

Jack Tillmany's Arcadia Publishing book "Theatres of San Francisco" can be previewed on Google Books. It's available from Amazon or your local bookseller.

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