El Capitan Theatre and Hotel, San Francisco
former movie theater in San Francisco, California, United States
El Capitan Theatre and Hotel, or The Cap, is a historic 1928 building containing a hotel, shops, and a former luxury vaudeville and movie theater in the Mission District of San Francisco, California. It has been listed by the city as a San Francisco Designated Landmark (no. 214), since March 3, 1996.
History
It is a Spanish colonial revival style with a Mexican baroque façade, designed by architect Gustave Albert Lansburgh. When it was built for the Ackerman and Harris vaudeville circuit, it was the second largest theater in San Francisco with 3,100-seats. It opened on June 29, 1928, with Edward Sloman's silent film We Americans (1928) starring George Sidney, Patsy Ruth Miller, and George J. Lewis. The theater contained a Wurlitzer theatre organ (style 235) to accompany silent films.
The building later became part of Fox West Coast Theatres (now Fox Theatres) as the "Mission Street Showcase" theater, and by 1950, they introduced CinemaScope and stereophonic sound. It closed on December 15, 1957.
Closure and modern history
In 1961, the theatre portion of the building was demolished, and turned into a parking lot by 1965.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “El Capitan Theatre and Hotel, San Francisco” is former movie theater in San Francisco, California, United States. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Capitan, Theatre and Hotel, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “former movie theater in San Francisco, California, United States” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q44633943. VIAF identifies the subject as 262795048. The Library of Congress control number is n2012063756. Authority coordinates are 37.759, -122.419. 1 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1928, 1996, 1950 and 1957.
Later fame can flatten the distinction between original context, subsequent adaptation and institutional collecting history. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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Three-step research path
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- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
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This entry incorporates text from “El Capitan Theatre and Hotel, San Francisco” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.