Pantages Theatre
937 Market Street,
San Francisco,
CA
94103
937 Market Street,
San Francisco,
CA
94103
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From San Francisco a night time postcard image of the Pantages & Empress Theatres.
In June, 1911, The Architect & Engineer of California published this item:
Miller & Colmesnil were listed as the architects for the project in an item in the July 4, 1911, issue of the San Francisco trade journal Building and Industrial News, which noted that the contract for the structural steel and iron work on the project had just been awarded to the Central Iron Works.Given the fact that Priteca was Pantages' protégé, hired specifically to design theaters, he undoubtedly designed the theater interior, but as he still had only limited experience as an architect (he was 22 years old), it seems most likely that Miller & Colmesnil, an established firm familiar with San Francisco’s building codes, designed the building itself. They surely would have designed the office building fronting the theater.
Around 1907, James Rupert Miller and George T. de Colmesnil hired Timothy Pflueger, then 15 years old, as an apprentice. in the late 1910s, after Colmesnil withdrew from the firm, Pflueger became a partner in the firm of Miller & Pflueger. As he had been with the firm for several years at the time the Pantages was built, it’s likely that he was involved in the project in some way, perhaps quite extensively. It’s easy to imagine Pflueger being impressed with the accomplishments of Priteca, who was less than three years his elder. Perhaps his involvement with the Pantages project had some influence on his decision to design theaters later in his career.
The building is still there. It looks like the two businesses on the ground floor are a print shop and a Social Security office.
From a Roloff posting on the Paramoung page comes this 1957 color picture postcard of Market Street showing several cinemas. Left can be seen the former Pantages Vaudeville Theater that had been converted into a Kress five & dime. Does this building still stand?
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Vintage images can be viewed here …
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Interior shot
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After conversion to Kress
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This was B. Marcus Priteca and Alexander Pantages’s first combined effort and led the way for many theatres to follow in a similar “Pantages” style. from Jack Tillmany’s book.