Baywood Theater

The opening date of the Baywood Theater was 20th August 1931.

You state that the interior has been only partially gutted. I have heard this before. What remains, and is it viewable? I have seen old photos of the stupendously decorated auditorium, and it would be interesting to see if any of that survives.

i remember this theatre is was a THRIFTY store for the longest time I was by there the other day Its now vacant, but you can tell that it was a large movie theatre in its day , the tarazzo is party still
in front!

the baywood theatre was not on el camino real, it was located on baywood ave between 3rd & 4th san mateo last manager there, before it closed was scrappy and beverly. theatre then became a thrifty drug bev and scrappy then moved to the fox san mateo until it closed then to the fox burlingame, until it closed , then to the fox town&country in san jose. scrappy fell off a ladder in the candy room and died poor beverly found him late that night. that had a horrible effect on her for many years ( those 2 worked together for at least 30 years) what ever happened to beverly brehmer??? larry goldsmith

This is a 1942 view of the Baywood.

Here is an August 1931 ad from the San Mateo Times:
http://tinyurl.com/nn7phj

In the American Classic Images vintage photo from 1942 put up by Lost Memory, something very interesting can be seen. This theatre was designed by S. Charles Lee. He remodeled the Coliseum Theatre in San Francisco around the same time, and the marquee he put on it is virtually identical to that of the built-from-scratch Baywood. The Lee-designed marquee remained on the Coliseum until its turn-of-the-millenium conversion to a Walgreens and condos. Over the years, the sunburst element was removed, along with much of the neon, and the reader boards were changed to plastic, but aside from that, the "Col"'s marquee survived the decades remarkably intact.
As for the Baywood's interior, I have finally seen for myself what's above the old Thrifty ceiling. Lengthy inspection revealed that there was even a third floor retrofitted into the converted building at one time, as some studs, walls, and outlines of even more walls and the third floor remain throughout. By and large though, it's a big empty shell. Scraps of theatre structure do still remain, enough to have made the look-see well worthwhile. The steel beams of the balcony structure are mostly extant, sticking out into the space. Two sets of balcony fire escape doors (the lower still functional and the upper converted to windows in the 50s) survive, with indented boxes in the concrete walls where EXIT signs used to be, three porcelain bulb sockets still visible. The proscenium is completely gone, as are all vestiges of the entire auditorium ceiling. The walls are, however, a different story: Much acoustical plaster remains. Depending on whether a particular section of wall was visible to the public when there were businesses in the upper part of the converted space, sections of the walls are either painted over in beige, silvery grey, or...they still have mural painting preserved. Careful examination of the walls revealed that the most visible muralwork--flowers, trees, plants--is the result of a later, perhaps immediate Postwar, redecoration. Through these paintings, the oxidized outlines of the original "High Deco" geometric stripes, waves, sunrays, scrolls, and stylized leaf shapes bleed through. On some of the wall surfaces that were painted out after the theatre closed, oxidized paint patterns from both decorative schemes show though in varying degrees. Among these, three lifesize human figures can be discerned. One seems to be a toga-clad man standing in a boat, another appears to be a woman with one arm outstretched, and a third is so vague that all I could tell was that the figure was standing. There is some ornamental plaster extant. Large stepped ribs which ran along the uppermost areas of the sidewalls survive. Each terminated in a cast plaster Deco scroll, like a giant geometric snail shell. Two remain intact on the South wall of the auditorium, and one remains intact on the North Wall. On the North wall also, a series of stepped, quarter-circle ribs which swooped down to join the now-vanished walls which angled-in toward the proscenium can still be seen.
Back to the ghostly human figures showing through later paint, it was impossible for me to ascertain whether these figures belong to the first Deco scheme or the later, softer "Foliate Moderne" scheme. My hunch would be the latter. However, the fact that I have once seen a photo of the original proscenium, and there were niches with Greco-Deco statues in them might be a clue that the human figures on the walls were there to harmonize with the statues. More research into the UCLA files of S. Charles Lee theatre photos may solve this.

Gary.

What is going on with that building now??? I know it is no longer a THRIFTY Drug.