Address | 221 University Avenue, Palo Alto, CA 94022 |
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Coordinates | 37°26′43″N122°09′46″W / 37.445208°N 122.162666°W |
Owner | David and Lucile Packard Foundation |
Type | Indoor theatre |
Construction | |
Opened | June 9, 1925 |
Renovated | 1987-1989 |
Architect | Weeks and Day |
Website | |
stanfordtheatre |
The Stanford Theatre is a classical independent movie theater in Palo Alto, California. It was designed and built in the 1920s as a movie palace styled in neoclassical Persian and Moorish architecture. Today it specializes in films produced between 1910 and 1970 and seasonal programs typically include film festivals for various genres, directors, and actors, such as Alfred Hitchcock, Bette Davis, and Cary Grant. The Stanford Theatre frequently accounts for as much as twenty-five percent of all classic film attendance in the United States. [1]
The Theatre has a "The Mighty Wurlitzer Organ" theatre organ made by Rudolph Wurlitzer Company. The organ is played live during intermissions, as well as to accompany silent films. [2]
Designed by architects Weeks and Day, the theater was built at a cost of US$300,000(equivalent to about $5,120,000 in 2022) with construction starting in 1924. [3] [4] It had a Leatherbury-Smith orchestral organ installed with pipes ranging in size from a toothpick to a 32-foot pipe providing sounds for stringed instruments, trumpes, flutes, saxophone, clarinet, and various percussion instruments. [5] The Theatre opened on June 9, 1925 with a showing of I'll Show You the Town after a dedication speech and had a capacity of approximately 1500. [6] By the 1960s the Theatre was on hard times, the organ had been removed and the interior was not cleaned to a degree that, "many moviegoers flatly refused to enter the place, no matter what was showing." [7] In 1987 after the death of Fred Astaire, David Woodley Packard had a film festival of Astaire's works at the theatre. The two week festival was so successful that his father, Hewlett-Packard co-founder David Packard, agreed with his idea to purchase the aging theatre. [8] [4]
It was purchased in 1987 for $7.7 million and restored by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation at an additional cost of $6 million for a 1989 grand opening of The Wizard of Oz. [9] Part of the restoration included installing an organ to replace the original which had been sold as parts. The process took 2 years to obtain and restore parts which included the 1926 console from Grauman's Chinese Theatre and the organ's 1928 pipes from Loew's Theatre. [10] The Theatre was renovated in late 2017 with repainting, new carpets, and the seats being restored with new padding and mohair coverings. It reopened that December with a showing of The Wizard of Oz [11]
It was renovated once again in 2023 with improvements such as repainting and reopened on July 1 for the start of a Cary Grant and Alfred Hitchcock film festival
The Stanford Theatre is currently managed by Cyndi Mortensen and operated by the Stanford Theatre Foundation, led by David Woodley Packard. [7] [12]
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David Packard was an American electrical engineer and co-founder, with Bill Hewlett, of Hewlett-Packard (1939), serving as president (1947–64), CEO (1964–68), and chairman of the board of HP. He served as U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense from 1969 to 1971 during the Nixon administration. Packard served as president of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USU) from 1976 to 1981 and chairman of its board of regents from 1973 to 1982. He was a member of the Trilateral Commission. Packard was the recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1988 and is noted for many technological innovations and philanthropic endeavors.
The Castro Theatre is a historic movie palace in the Castro District of San Francisco, California. The venue became San Francisco Historic Landmark #100 in September 1976. Located at 429 Castro Street, it was built in 1922 with a California Churrigueresque façade that pays homage—in its great arched central window surmounted by a scrolling pediment framing a niche—to the basilica of Mission Dolores nearby. Its designer, Timothy L. Pflueger, also designed Oakland's Paramount Theater and other movie theaters in California during that period. The theater has over 1,400 seats. The theater's ceiling is the last known leatherette ceiling in the United States and possibly the world. Another leatherette ceiling was demolished just a few years ago. To make the ceiling look as though it is leather requires a special technique regarded as lost today.
Stanford University Medical Center is a medical complex which includes Stanford Health Care and Stanford Children's Health. It is consistently ranked as one of the best hospitals in the United States and serves as a teaching hospital for the Stanford University School of Medicine. In 2022-23, it was ranked by the US News as the 3rd-best hospital in California and 10th-best in the country.
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El Capitan Theatre is a fully restored movie palace at 6838 Hollywood Boulevard in the Hollywood neighborhood in Los Angeles, California, United States. The theater and adjacent Hollywood Masonic Temple is owned by The Walt Disney Company and serves as the venue for a majority of the Walt Disney Studios' film premieres.
The Chicago Theatre, originally known as the Balaban and Katz Chicago Theatre, is a landmark theater located on North State Street in the Loop area of Chicago, Illinois. Built in 1921, the Chicago Theatre was the flagship for the Balaban and Katz (B&K) group of theaters run by A. J. Balaban, his brother Barney Balaban and partner Sam Katz. Along with the other B&K theaters, from 1925 to 1945 the Chicago Theatre was a dominant movie theater enterprise. Currently, Madison Square Garden, Inc. owns and operates the Chicago Theatre as a performing arts venue for stage plays, magic shows, comedy, speeches, sporting events and popular music concerts.
The Packard Humanities Institute (PHI) is a non-profit foundation, established in 1987, and located in Los Altos, California, which funds projects in a wide range of conservation concerns in the fields of archaeology, music, film preservation, and historic conservation, plus Greek epigraphy, with an aim to create tools for basic research in the Humanities.
The HP Garage is a private museum where the company Hewlett-Packard (HP) was founded. It is located at 367 Addison Avenue in Palo Alto, California. It is considered to be the "Birthplace of Silicon Valley". In the 1930s, Stanford University and its Dean of Engineering Frederick Terman began encouraging faculty and graduates to stay in the area instead of leaving California, and develop a high-tech region. HP founders Bill Hewlett and David Packard are considered the first Stanford students who took Terman's advice.
David Woodley Packard is an American former professor and philanthropist; he is the son of Hewlett-Packard co-founder David Packard. A former HP board member (1987–1999), David is best known for his opposition to the HP-Compaq merger and his support for classical studies, especially the digitization of classics research. He has made significant contribution to the study of the language and the sign repertory of the Minoan Linear A script. Packard currently serves as president of the Packard Humanities Institute.
The Plaza Theatre is a historic building in El Paso, Texas built in 1930. The theater stands as one of the city's most well-known landmarks, and remains operational today. The theatre is a National Historic Building of Significance featuring the 2,050-seat Kendall Kidd Performance Hall, and the smaller 200-seat Philanthropy Theatre. It hosts Broadway productions, musical concerts, individual performers and the annual Plaza Classic Film Festival.
Dennis James is an American musician and historic preservationist. Beginning in 1969, he presented historically informed live accompaniments for silent films, with piano, theatre organ, chamber ensemble and full symphony orchestras, throughout the United States, Canada, Mexico and overseas. He is now primarily active as a noted multi-instrumentalist, specializing on Franklin glass armonica and the theremin, prominently performing in New York at the Metropolitan Opera, for Hollywood film scorings, and repeat performances at Lincoln Center's Mostly Mozart Festival plus performing at the Tanglewood Festival with the Boston Symphony Orchestra performing the intricate glass armonica complete part in the U.S. debut of George Benjamin's opera "Written on Skin".
Lucile Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford (LPCH) is a nationally ranked women's and children's hospital which is part of the Stanford University Health system. The hospital is located adjacent to the campus at 725 Welch Road, Palo Alto, California. It was founded in 1991 and is staffed by over 650 physicians with 4,750 staff and volunteers. The hospital specializes in the care of infants, children, teens, young adults aged 0–21, but sometimes treats older adults and expectant mothers. Lucile Packard Children's Hospital is an ACS verified Level 1 regional pediatric trauma center, 1 of 7 in the state.
The Stavros Niarchos Foundation Parkway, or simply the Parkway, is a movie theater located at 5 West North Avenue in Baltimore, Maryland. The Parkway is open as of May 3, 2017, and is the new permanent home of MdFF. The Maryland Film Festival, a 5-day annual festival created and operated by MdFF, is housed in and around the Parkway and throughout the Station North Arts and Entertainment District.
Timothy Hopkins was the adopted son of Central Pacific Railroad co-owner Mark Hopkins' widow, Mary Hopkins, and friend of another co-owner Leland Stanford and his wife, Jane. He was one of the founders of Palo Alto and a trustee of Stanford University for over 50 years. His estate is now the site of the Menlo Park Civic Center and of SRI International.
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