 |             (Post deleted by staff )  StuckInTheSixties: You can see some interior shots here: http://www.uptowntheatrenapa.com/uptown-photos/ |
| | (Post deleted by staff ) StuckInTheSixties: You can see some interior shots here: http://www.uptowntheatrenapa.com/uptown-photos/ |
September 14, 2011
This is the Uptown Theater, in downtown Napa. It’s a wonderful old theater, being used now for concerts, and seats 860. It was opened in 1937 as a movie theater, and was built in the interesting Art-Deco style that was popular at that time. This is the movie theater of my youth, where I would go on Friday or Saturday night with my friend Kenny. We were less interested in the movie than in looking for girls who would sit with us and make out in the darkness.
As the marketing of movies changed during the seventies, single-room theaters like this fell on hard times, and Uptown began to look old, rundown, and had lost much of the charm it had in the previous decades. Eventually it was split into two separate rooms, the beginning of the apparent undignified death of Uptown. Then an eight-room multiplex, one in the Cinedome nationwide chain of theaters, was built across town.
Struggling in the face of such odds, the last gasp in the death of Uptown appeared to come when it was split again into a four-room theater in the late eighties. I actually went to see a movie there during that time, and it was an awful experience. The theater was completely run down dirty. The seats were broken and coming loose from the grimy floor. The carpeting was worn and frayed, and the fuzzy, lo-fidelity sound bled from one room into the others, etc. It was truly pathetic. Fortunately, by this time porn theaters had fallen to the advent of home video, or it probably would have suffered that fate, as well.
That sad chapter of the life of the Uptown Theater mercifully didn’t last long. It shut down, locked its doors, and sat there on the corner of 3rd and Franklin Streets for years, slowly crumbling, decaying, and waiting for the inevitable wrecking ball and replacement with a parking garage that seemed to be destined.
But eventually, before that sad fate, Uptown was given a new life when it was purchased by a local vintner and real estate mogul. He had a vision for a premier live music venue in his home town. It took the better part of ten years, and who knows how much money, but Uptown was transformed into a sparkling comfortable concert theater with a fantastic sound system, and not a bad seat in the house. All of the interior and exterior Art Deco details were preserved, repaired and repainted, and it’s now a thriving venue, without a doubt the best place to see music in the North Bay.
The photo is almost unaltered. The only thing I did was to brighten the colors just the tiniest bit.
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