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Tarnishing a Landmark: The Balboa Theatre
By David Marshall, AIA
September/October 2023
 This 2006 photo shows the 1924 Balboa Theatre, at 868 Fourth Avenue in downtown San Diego, when it was vacant, prior to restoration. The walls had been painted off-white and, in the 1940s, burgundy tile was added to the lower walls. The historic blade sign and marquee had been removed by this time. |
 In 2008, the building was fully restored to look as it did on opening day in 1924. The restoration included a replica blade sign and marquee, and a return to the original colors. |
 The sad, ill-conceived state of the current Balboa Theatre after clashing, non-historic colors were added (2023), masking its Spanish Revival charms. All photos courtesy Heritage Architecture & Planning |
As an architect who has spent 33 years preserving and restoring historic buildings, I often tell people that it only takes one ignorant or callous owner to damage or destroy a historic building. Sometimes it’s through demolition. Sometimes it’s by creating a bad addition. And other times it’s by slathering the exterior with ugly and inappropriate paint colors.
The historic 1924 Balboa Theatre, a City of San Diego-owned landmark, recently fell victim to a misguided painting crew and the results are embarrassing. San Diego Theatres, which operates the building, decided to “celebrate” the Balboa Theatre’s centennial by obliterating the meticulously restored color scheme by applying bland new colors. The new paint scheme is not only wrong for this building, but the jarring colors would even look bad on a Walmart. The mix of blinding white walls, battleship gray first floor and windows, raspberry ornament, and gold accents clash with the historic tile dome and hunter green blade sign.
San Diego Theatres entrusted a New York sign designer to select this terrible paint scheme, which obscures the rich Spanish Revival color palette that was carefully restored in 2008 as part of an award-winning $2-million restoration. The result of this unharmonious paint job is that the theater now looks similar to when it was an abandoned, run-down relic in the 1980s.
San Diego Theatres’ press release uses classic doublespeak, claiming that the new color scheme “aligns with the historic architectural style of the venue.” White and gray are not Spanish Revival colors and never have been. Rather than invigorating the theater's facade, as San Diego Theatres boasts, they have drained the life (and colors) out of this historic building, making it visually disappear amongst the equally bland buildings next door.
How did the City of San Diego—in particular the Historical Resources Board—allow this to happen to their building? They were simply following the city’s ill-conceived policy of declining to review exterior paint colors on historic buildings. They consider paint to be “reversible” and “temporary,” which is technically true, as long as you’re okay with looking at an ugly, bastardized building for at least 15 years.
The color of a building is the first thing anyone notices. People won’t be able to appreciate the wood-framed windows, decorative wrought iron, or hand-crafted ornament of the Balboa Theatre until after they are visually accosted by the awful color palette.
The Historical Resources Board needs to change their hands-off policy about paint colors. Otherwise, we might one day be seeing a lipstick red San Diego Mission, a battleship gray Santa Fe Depot, or a purple-striped Organ Pavilion.
David Marshall is president of Heritage Architecture & Planning, which helped restore the Balboa Theatre in 2008, and the author of two books about San Diego history. He has served as SOHO president and a trustee for the California Preservation Foundation. David was also a member of the City of San Diego Historical Resources Board from 2002 to 2008.
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