Golden Gate Theatre

The Golden Gate Theatre is a performance venue in the Civic Center neighborhood of downtown San Francisco; it first opened its gilded gates in 1922 as a vaudeville venue.

In the 1960s it was divided into a two-screen movie theater, boasting a balcony called the Penthouse and a revolutionary Cinerama screen – made of hundreds of individual vertical strips of screen material, unlike the continuous surface of most movie screens. By the 1970s however, The Golden Gate Theatre was reduced to showing blaxsploitation films and finally shuttered its doors. In 1979, the theatre re-opened following an intense renovation, which attempted to restore the venue to its Art Deco and Gothic Revival heritage.

The Golden Gate, in addition to the Orpheum Theatre and the Curran (all in San Francisco) is owned by SHN, a theatrical producing company helmed by Carole Shorenstein Hays and Robert Nederlander. Shows at the Golden Gate Theatre have included classic revivals as well as contemporary offerings like A Chorus Line, Sweeney Todd, Stomp, Hairspray, Mamma Mia!, Chicago, and Rent. Legally Blonde: The Musical also held its preview engagement here before it went to Broadway.

The theater has four sections including the Orchestra - Main floor, and three sections on the second floor: the loge, mezzanine and balcony, seating approximately 2,400 people. The Golden Gate Theatre’s sign stands nearly four stories high and serves as a reminder of the past and a beacon of the future.