55 Mason St. |
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Opened: Well, it never did. This announcement of the "Hotel and Theater Building" appeared in the June 17, 1911 issue of the San Francisco Call. Thanks to Art Siegel for locating it via the website of the
California Digital Newspaper Collection.
Architect: William Beasley was the architect for version #1. For reasons unknown just months later Earl B. Scott did a different design for the same developers that was actually built. Well, part of it got built anyway. K. McDonald came along in 1922 as the architect when the project resumed construction.
Seating: It was announced as a 1,500 seat legit theatre in version #1. A story about version #2 noted it would be 1,600.
The location on the southwest corner of Mason and Eddy was the site of the Tivoli Opera House that had been lost in 1906. The replacement Tivoli Theatre, just around the corner at 70 Eddy St., would open in 1913.
The June 17, 1911 article in the Call appeared under the banner headline "Large Buildings Going Up In The Downtown District." The story was titled "New Theater, Hotel and Big Office Buildings" and also profiled two other buildings. It promised "Construction Work Now Under Way or Soon to Be Begun" and noted that with this work "the downtown district will rapidly take on a more finished aspect." They had this to say about the theatre building:
"New Theater And Hotel - The Downtown Realty company's theater and hotel building to be erected on the southwest corner of Eddy and Mason streets will be an imposing six story affair. The theater will seat 1,500 — 600 in balcony and 900 in the orchestra. A row of boxes will surround the balcony. The equipment will be of the most up to date style.
"The stage will have a 40 foot opening and a 35 foot depth. There will be a smoking room off one of the exits, a feature which no other theater in the city possesses. The entrance will be on the Mason street side. At one time the Shuberts had almost closed a lease for this site with the Prior estate, which owns the land. This was the site on which the Tivoli stood at the time of the fire. It was here that Mme. Tetrazzini was 'discovered' by San Francisco.
"A feature of the theater will be the absence of an advertising curtain. It will have a French velour drop curtain instead. The chairs will be large and roomy. Some of the dressing rooms will have baths, an unusual convenience. The scenery will be shifted by a new electrical contrivance instead of by ropes. The interior of the theater will be finished in ivory and gold. The exterior will be in Romanesque style, in red and buff brick, laid in Flemish bond.
"The hotel section of the building will be finished in Flemish oak with mosaic marble vestibule. it will be a high class European hostelry, with a cafe on the corner. The hotel will have three elevators and marble staircase and will be a very ornamental structure throughout. William Beasley is the architect."
A July 8, 1911 item in the Call noting that popular comedian Ferris Hartman would be operating the theatre. The article is on the
CDNC website.
Design #2 with a different architect. This item appeared in the September 2, 1911 issue of the San Francisco Call. Beasley was no longer with the project. This was a design by Earl B. Scott.
The Athens Lodgings (later the Bristol Hotel) is in the foreground as we look across to the construction fence around the lot where the new hotel, eventually to be called the Ambassador, would rise. Thanks to the late Mark Ellinger for locating the c.1911 photo in the collection of the UC Berkeley Bancroft Library.
The steel was going up on the theatre and hotel and things were far enough along that an artist was working on the "massive painting which will be in the proscenium arch, 40 by 80 feet...", according to this February 10, 1912 story in the Call. Thanks to Michael Thomas Angelo for finding this article as well as other items for a
BAHT Facebook page post about the building. Angelo noted that Hartman died in an Oakland flop house in September 1931.
Legal troubles stopped the project in December 1912 with the building unfinished. The December 31, 1912 Call had a story headed "
Prior Heirs Want Lot." It sat 10 years. It was a dispute between the developer, Downtown Realty, and the heirs of the person that had owned the land. It seems the developer hadn't been paying the rent and thought those unpaid amounts could eventually be paid as partial payment on an option they had to buy the property. They did not prevail. The story is on the CNDC website.
The never-to-be-completed theatre is shown in blue in this detail from image 65 of the 1913 Sanborn insurance map. That's Taylor St. at the bottom. Thanks to Art Siegel for locating the map in the
Library of Congress collection.
The building is on the right, sitting unfinished in 1920 with no work having been done on it since 1912. We're looking south on Mason toward Market St. It's a photo from the Jesse Brown Cook
scrapbooks appearing on
Calisphere from the UC Berkeley Bancroft Library. Gary Parks comments that the building we see on the right down on Market is the
St. Francis Theatre.
The hotel portion of the project was completed in 1922. It's unknown how far along the theatre was when work stopped in 1912. When the building opened in 1922 the hotel was called the Ambassador -- and the space that was intended as the theatre had become a parking garage.
An early postcard of the Ambassador. Thanks to Michael Thomas Angelo for finding it.
A 1930 brochure for the hotel appearing on Wikimedia Commons.
A 2006 view of the building by Mark Ellinger. He called this his "postcard view."
A plaque on the building with several problems including calling the building the "former Ferris Harriman Theatre" and saying that the earlier building on the site was the "original Tivoli Opera House," when it was actually version #3. It's a 2010 photo by Badmachine that appears with the
Wikipedia
article about the hotel.
The Wikipedia story has its own set of issues. Among other
problems, they also list Hartman's name as Harriman and assert that the theatre
was completed with the rest of the building in 1911. When did it cease being a theatre and get turned into a parking garage? Well, they think that was a 1929 event. Such fun!
Looking south on Mason St. toward Market. On the left it's the Bristol
Hotel, once the home of the Breakers Cafe and later the Black Cat. On the right is the Ambassador. Photo: Google Maps - 2019
Status: The Ambassador still operates. It's a 134 room SRO hotel now owned by the Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corporation.
More information: Well, there really isn't any.
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