Balboa Theatre

Dan,

It is my understanding that there were organ pipes in those rooms. I always thought that the wooden chutes brought air to them but perhaps they just distributed the sound from them to the upstairs lobby. Beyond that, your guess is as good as mine. I think you were the one that showed me the remains of the original blueprints that someone decided to just rip off the wall.

Here is a link to a great Union/Tribune article:
View link

I stand corrected. Yes, the facades for the organ echo chambers are still there. The air chutes are gone, therefore no organ pipes, and the one on the right side is merely a passage from the booth to the manager’s office. My mistake.

For the person who wanted to volunteer at the Balboa, a good way might be to join the:

Balboa Theatre Foundation.
PO Box 371461
San Diego, CA 92137
(619) 233-1333

Here is a link to a video news story about the restoration. I don’t know if it is just my computer, but the video is very choppy and the sound is messed up but there are some good shots of the interior.

http://video.nbcsandiego.com/player/?id=189798

An old friend in San Diego just called me and said that channel 39 had just done a piece on the Balboa and that I should go to their website and look at the pictures. I did and they are just wonderful. It looks as though they are doing a beautiful job. I am so happy to see it! Steve, it looks like those two rooms on either side of the projection booth that we think were antiphonal chambers for the organ are still there but the grille work that used to be on the walls to either side of the doors is gone; it does look as if the rooms themselves are still there though. Folks, go to the channel 39 website, search for Balboa Theatre and look at the 46 picture slide show they have. It’s really great.

That’s too bad. Those chambers were very interesting. The one on the 4th Ave. side had been reduced to housing the rectifiers for the lamphouses; the one on the other side had collected old junk. I wonder if they ever had any pipes in them? I looked, but could never find, any wind trunks going to them. There were square holes in the floor of both which led into these curving wooden shafts that ended at, and opened onto, the ornamental grilles that were in the ceiling of the upstairs lobby (I climbed through one of those shafts just to see where it went). The main pipe chambers were above the stage; in fact, the grille work above the proscenium was where their sound would have come from. There was a large wind trunk that went from the basement all the way up to those chambers. I wonder if those are still there?

A question for Steve Karo please: Is the projection booth going to be re-equipped?

To DanW, Thanks for the kind comments.

The organ being installed into the Balboa Theatre is not the original one. That one remains at Symphony Hall (Fox). The one being installed at the Balboa is a rare Wonder Morton Organ, one of only five and comes from Loew’s Valencia Theatre in Jamaica, Queens, New York. The Balboa Theatre Foundation has purchased it, is restoring it and installing it into the Balboa Theatre. They still desperately need donations to complete the project so if you are so inclined please make a tax deductable donation to the Balboa Theatre Foundation’s organ fund.

I had a tour of the theatre on Friday and it is really going to be outstanding thanks to the sympathetic shepharding of architects, engineers and overseen by the Centre City Development Corporation.

Steve Karo

A Robert-Morton theater organ size 4/31 was installed in the Balboa Theater in 1923. Note: Moved in 1929 to Fox Theatre in San Diego.

I’d just like to remind everyone that this grand old house would have been toast a long time ago if it hadn’t been for the efforts of Steve Karo.

Here are two recent photos:
http://tinyurl.com/33umko
http://tinyurl.com/2r6nvd

There’s a cover article in today’s San Diego Reader, detailing the histories of all the downtown theaters once run by Vince Miranda, at one time co-owner of California’s Pussycat Theatre chain. The final days of the Balboa, including details on how the city stole the building, are well covered, right up to the day the keys were turned over to city reps, who then left the building to rot for 20 years. The article is built from a series of email interviews with Cinema Treasures contribs Dan Whitehead and Tim David (David is Miranda’s godson). Unfortunately, the online version doesn’t have any of the great photos and graphics seen in the printed version – I wrote the piece and will probably put scans of the graphics on my own webpage before much longer, after the next issue comes out. Here’s a link to the article on the Reader site:

View link

This is our second major feature on southern CA theaters in about a year (the other, “Field Of Screens,” is just on San Diego drive-ins and can be found on the Reader site with the search bar). If anyone here likes the article(s) and would like to encourage the publisher to greenlight more, feel free to leave your thoughts about the piece in the comment section after article. The paper really pays attention to reader comments!
http://www.sdreader.com/ed/cover/

Just for the record, the waterfalls in the auditorium had nothing whatsoever to do with the air handling system. There were two huge, monster squirrel-cage type fans that handled the air in the building. One was in the basement and it also heated the building with steam generated by the city. The other was in the dome on the roof. Neither one of them was connected to either one of the waterfalls in any way, shape or form. The swithc that turned them on and off was in the projection booth and I hooked it up to the automation system. The waterfalls would turn on when the title curtain closed at the end of the show and turn off when the show started. Some time in the early ‘80s the water supply to them was cut. After that, I used to take a tall A-frame ladded and fill them with a hose about once a week (twice in the summer). And just for the record, the theatre did not have refrigerated air conditioning. The fan in the basement had an air wash chamber but that was it. This is just a little Balboa trivia from someone who knows. I explored every inch of that buidling from the roof all the way down to the basements and EVERYTHING in between, including the old hotel.

To Steve Karo, Dan Whitehead and others: Thanks for helping to save the Balboa Theater in downtown San Diego! I have created a virtual Balboa Theater at my virtual San Diego site (Diegoland) on the Second Life Website:

http://www.secondlife.com

I hope you enjoy it!
Robert Hippen