Tower wall sconce 1999

Description:
Photograph of a wall sconce (with glass missing) from the Tower Theater, originally installed circa 1939, 5110 Telegraph Avenue, Temescal district, Oakland, Calif. (from the collection of Dan Fontes)

Date of Document:
2000

Document Author:
Jeff Norman

Geographic Location:
5110 Telegraph Avenue, Oakland, Calif.

Context:
Originally opened as a nickelodian in 1913 as the L. D. Purdy (named after its operator, Lawrence Dorman Purdy) and designed by locally prominent architect Alfred William Smith (1864 1933), the building housed a store on either side of the theater s recessed arch entrance. (Jennifer Dowling note, from an article published in the Oakland Heritage Alliance Newsletter, Winter-Spring 1999)The theater was remodeled in 1916 and renamed the Claremont. In 1939, the theater was completely modernized and its name changed to the Tower, where mainstream American movies and foreign films were screened. [Jeff Norman note]The architect for the [1939 Tower] remodel was Alfred J. Hopper, listed in city directories as a carpenter. Hopper was involved in other theater remodels, including earlier work on the Mission in San Francisco (1932) and the Uptown in Rockridge (1930). He later worked on the New Fruitvale (1941). For the Tower remodel, a Moderne theater was built, essentially inside the old movie house. The new theater had smooth, curved walls and coved ceilings, horizontal lines, and porthole shapes. The stores were removed, making space for an expanded lobby and first floor restrooms. . . The remodeled building featured the latest air conditioning system, the most modern sound equipment, and a new screen. [Note from The End of the Temescal Nickelodeon by Jennifer Dowling]From 1913 to 1973, the theater stood in the middle of the east side of the 5100 block of Telegraph Avenue. The stores and upper story apartments to the immediate south of the theater were demolished circa 1973 when 51st Street was widened to serve as a feeder to the newly opened Grove-Shafter Freeway (Highway 24), thereby making the theater the corner building. Purchased in 1976 by a Los Angeles-based company that ran a national chain of adult movie theaters, it became the Pussycat. The theater closed following the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989 and never reopened, largely due to the organizing efforts of the t