Market Street Cinema

Market Street Cinema stood at 1075-1077 Market Street in San Francisco. It opened on 22 December 1912 as Grauman's Imperial Theater, designed by Cunningham & Politeo and sold by the San Francisco Call as the city's first English music-hall house; it became the United Artists Theatre in 1931, held the benefit world premiere of Dirty Harry on 22 December 1971, and from 1972 ran as an adult venue under Mike Weldon, its blue false front reading "See the beauty, touch the magic". The 1986 National Register listing that is often claimed for it covers the surrounding district, which classes the building as a non-contributing intrusion. The club shut in February 2013; the city approved demolition in October 2015 and ninety flats now occupy the lot. Its haunted reputation dates from a Before It's News post of 11 February 2013 and a Ghost Adventures episode broadcast three weeks after the closure. The grievance that is documented at the address is a different one: dancers sued in federal court over stage fees and misclassification, and the case settled for at least $6.5 million in 2022.

On 19 December 1912 the San Francisco Call announced the house under the headline "IMPERIAL THEATER IS AN INNOVATION / Opening of Grauman's New Music Hall Next Sunday / Epoch in Amusements". It stood at "Seventh and Market streets", had been "erected at a cost of $200,000", and its "architecture and interior decorations are of the Viennese style", blue and gold inside, with "a large auditorium and promenade balcony" seating 1,600. The novelty the paper sold was the programme rather than the plaster: "the Imperial will give local theatergoers their first opportunity to witness entertainment of the English music hall type". The manager, D. J. Grauman, was quoted directly: "I have long wanted to present a variety show of the higher type, a show that would appeal to the better class of the amusement seeking public." The San Francisco firm Cunningham & Politeo drew the plans. Three days later the Call carried the opening advertisement on page 28: "GALA OPENING SUNDAY, DEC 22", "San Francisco's Theater Beautiful", "TABLOID OPERA / DE LUXE MOTION DRAMAS", headed by "A Society Circus Tragedy" and "its cast of 200 ARTISTS, depicting the thrilling and sensational plunge to death of HANS VON HARTEN, the Nobleman Equestrian". Prices ran "ORCHESTRA SEATS 25c, FAMILY CIRCLE 15c", across three performances a day. The advertisement promised "14 - ORCHESTRAL SOLOISTS - 14"; the paper's own article three days earlier had counted "The special 12 piece orchestra". Above the whole theatrical section the Call printed the line that explains the difference: "The following accounts are submitted by the publicity promoters of the various theaters." The end of the Grauman period is told two ways. Cinema Treasures records that the theatre "remained under the operation of Sid Grauman until it was sold in 1919 to Herman Wobber"; Curbed SF's 2013 account names the buyer as Adolf Zukor and dates the family's move to Southern California to 1917. No primary document settling the two versions was located for this entry. The Imperial became the Premiere Theatre in August 1929 and, on 28 March 1931, the United Artists Theatre, after a remodel by Walker & Eisen with the architect Clifford A. Balch. Carl G. Moeller remodelled it again in 1959. Loew's bought it on 15 October 1969 and renamed it Loews Market Street Cinema. Under the Loew's name it held the best-filmed night of its history. A KPIX-TV news reel kept by the San Francisco Bay Area Television Archive at San Francisco State University, catalogued as KPIX 107090-2K and tagged "loews theater" and "market street", records "the benefit world movie premiere of Dirty Harry at Loews Theater in San Francisco, on December 22nd 1971". The archive's description lists "crowds cheering in the rain as guests arrive (including Mayor Joseph Alioto)", Clint Eastwood "interviewed on a podium outside by KPIX's Rolfe Peterson", and "members of the Progressive Labor Party protesting against the film, one of whom is carrying a sign which reads: 'Cops are no pals to Clarence Johnson.'" The premiere fell fifty-nine years to the day after the Imperial opened. In 1972 the adult-film producer Mike Weldon bought the building and renamed it the Market Street Cinema. Films gave way to live performance, and the marquee carried the line the neighbourhood remembered, "See the beauty, touch the magic", painted across a blue false front that boxed in the 1912 facade. Cinema Treasures states that "The Market Street Cinema was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1986". The 1986 listing is a district. The Market Street Theatre and Loft District was entered on the Register on 10 April 1986 under reference 86000729, with a boundary running "982-1112 Market St. (northwest side), 973-1105 Market St. (southeast side). One Jones St. and 1-35 Taylor St.", which takes in this parcel. The nomination lists it at block 3703, lot 62, as a Non-contributor, and heads its entry "(Intrusion No. 26, significance continued)". The district description names it among the few intrusions: "The Imperial (United Artists) Theater (No. 26) has acquired a flimsy-looking addition above the lobby, over which the original theatre's gable end peeks, and its front is plastered with stucco, possibly removable." The same sheet gives the original auditorium 1,700 seats and records that the house "was designed as Grauman's Opera House, a place for musical comedy, but opened as Grauman's Imperial Theatre". Three capacities circulate for the room: 1,600 in the Call of 1912, 1,700 in the 1985 nomination and 1,485 in the Cinema Treasures record of its final years. The women who worked in the building left a paper trail of their own, and it is a federal court file. Exhibit A to the settlement agreement in Doe v. Cin-Lan, Inc. (E.D. Mich., No. 2:08-cv-12719), filed on 22 October 2010, lists at entry 22 "MARKET ST. CINEMA, LLC / MARKET STREET CINEMA / SAN FRANCISCO / CA" among the Deja Vu-affiliated clubs. On 8 August 2014 dancers filed Roe v. SFBSC Management, LLC in the Northern District of California, and Market St. Cinema, LLC appears in the caption. The complaint said the clubs had been "misclassifying the dancers as independent contractors (when they in fact were employees)" and engaging in "unlawful tip-splitting", and it asked for "reimbursement of stage fees paid to the clubs for each night that a dancer worked". On 12 January 2015 Magistrate Judge Laurel D. Beeler allowed the plaintiffs to sue as Jane Roes, recording their reasons in her order: exotic dancing carries "significant social stigma"; "there are risks inherent in working as an exotic dancer, including risk of injury" by nightclub patrons; and at these clubs "it is customary for exotic dancers to use pseudonyms or stage names for privacy and personal[-]safety reasons". The Ninth Circuit reversed the first settlement on 11 December 2019 in Roes 1-2 v. SFBSC Mgmt., LLC, 944 F.3d 1035. A second settlement closed the case on 29 November 2022: "at least $6.5 million (all non-reversionary)", over a San Francisco class period running "from August 8, 2010 to November 16, 2018", with Market St. Cinema, LLC named among the settling defendants. The club shut in February 2013 and the building went on the market. Randy Shaw wrote in BeyondChron that "I've been surprised over the lack of positive publicity about the closing of the Market Street Cinema at 1077 Market. Behind its horrific blue exterior false frontage is a true historic theater that preservationists should be raising money to acquire." Nobody did. On 22 October 2015 the Planning Commission approved the demolition unanimously; the San Francisco Examiner reported that "Significant interior and exterior alterations have occurred since the structure was built, preventing the building from qualifying for the California Register of Historical Resources" - the same alterations the 1985 nomination had already described. Commissioner Michael Antonini told the hearing: "It's regrettable that the theater that had originally been there can't be restored...[but] there still is an opportunity to create a theater district along Market Street.".

Nothing of the theatre survives to visit. The San Francisco Department of Building Inspection issued permit 201603101753, "to demolish 7 stories, adult theatre building", on 7 June 2016 and signed it off on 13 April 2017. The same public file records the replacement: permit 201405286908, "to erect 8 stories, 1 basement of 90 dwelling units with commercial, car stacker parking, roof deck", filed on 28 May 2014, issued on 15 August 2016 and completed on 23 February 2018, at a revised cost of $27,000,000. It sits on block 3703, lot 062, the parcel the 1986 nomination had assigned to the theatre. The ninety flats were marketed as "Stage 1075", whose sales site advertised "MID-MARKET RESIDENCES" and "SELLING FALL 2017"; that domain lapsed after 2019 and now serves an unrelated industrial-gas company. The address today is private housing, with no public access and no marker. The file, by contrast, is open and free of charge. Both San Francisco Call pages of December 1912 are on Chronicling America at the Library of Congress. The National Register nomination that describes the building, including its Non-contributor status, is served by the National Park Service under reference 86000729. The KPIX film of the Dirty Harry premiere streams from the San Francisco Bay Area Television Archive under identifier "KPIX 107090-2K". The orders in Roe v. SFBSC Management are on govinfo.gov, and the Ninth Circuit opinion is on the court's own server. The building permits are a public dataset on DataSF. The San Francisco History Center at the San Francisco Public Library holds the Imperial Theater photographs of 1919 that Curbed SF reproduced in 2013. The district around the gap remains listed. The Market Street Theatre and Loft District still runs "982-1112 Market St. (northwest side), 973-1105 Market St. (southeast side). One Jones St. and 1-35 Taylor St.", and this parcel stood on the southeast side, the "973-1105 Market St." range, between Sixth and Seventh.