The Alhambra Theatre is a

Moorish Revival Moorish Revival or Neo-Moorish is one of the exotic revival architectural styles that were adopted by architects of Europe and the Americas in the wake of Romanticist Orientalism. It reached the height of its popularity after the mid-19th centur ...

movie theater A movie theater (American English), cinema (British English), or cinema hall ( Indian English), also known as a movie house, picture house, the movies, the pictures, picture theater, the silver screen, the big screen, or simply theater is a ...

building at 2330

Polk Street Polk Street (also sometimes referred to by its German name, ''Polkstrasse'') is a street in San Francisco, California, that travels northward from Market Street to Beach Street and is one of the main thoroughfares of the Polk Gulch neighborhood t ...

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

, that opened on November 5, 1926. The theater was designed by

Miller & Pflueger Miller and Pflueger was an architectural firm that formed when James Rupert Miller named Timothy L. Pflueger partner. Pflueger, at the time a rising star of San Francisco's architect community, had begun his architectural career with architectur ...

(architect

Timothy L. Pflueger Timothy Ludwig Pflueger (September 26, 1892 – November 20, 1946) was an architect, interior designer and architectural lighting designer in the San Francisco Bay Area in the first half of the 20th century. Together with James Rupert Miller, Ja ...

also designed the

Castro Theater The Castro Theatre is a historic movie palace in San Francisco that became San Francisco Historic Landmark #100 in September 1976. Located at 429 Castro Street in the Castro District, it was built in 1922 with a California Churrigueresque faça ...

and the Paramount Theater in

Oakland, California Oakland is the largest city and the county seat of Alameda County, California, United States. A major West Coast of the United States, West Coast port, Oakland is the largest city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, the third ...

). The Alhambra Theatre once had 1,625 seats when it opened and cost $500,000. It was later converted to twin theaters in 1976. It reopened as a single screen in 1988 and finally closed as a movie theater on February 22, 1998. It was designated official San Francisco landmark #217 on February 21, 1996. The building is now occupied by

Crunch Fitness Crunch Fitness is a U.S.-based brand of over 400 franchised and corporate owned fitness clubs located in the United States, Canada, Spain, Portugal, Costa Rica, and Australia. Founded by Doug Levine in 1989, its current Worldwide CEO is Jim Row ...

. The conversion to the gym has retained most of the interior detail, and movies are shown on the still-present big screen. The balcony retains the aisles, which have been widened, although there are only four. They accommodate about 80 cardio machines facing the screen.

References

External links

Alhambra Theater at Cinema Treasures

Historic Photos at SF Main Library Online Collection

Alhambra Theater at Noehill.com
Cinemas and movie theaters in the San Francisco Bay Area Theatres in San Francisco Russian Hill, San Francisco San Francisco Designated Landmarks Event venues established in 1926 1926 establishments in California Theatres completed in 1926 Moorish Revival architecture in California {{US-theat-struct-stub