Address
275 Hayes Street
275 Hayes Street
San Francisco
California
Pacific
94102
United States
The Sydney Goldstein Theater (formerly the Nourse Theater) opened in 1926 as the auditorium for Commerce High School. Following the school’s closure in 1952, the auditorium found new life as a public performing arts venue. Allen Ginsburg, Jim Morrison, and the Pickle Family Circus, among others, took the stage. That interlude ended in 1985, when the space was repurposed as a makeshift courthouse for a major State Civil Court case on asbestos exposure. When City Arts & Lectures founder Sydney Goldstein first saw the theater in 2011, piled-high boxes of old papers, file cabinets, and dusty furniture filled every bit of usable floor, including a deck that covered much of the auditorium. There were no seats, no sound equipment, and no lighting. Driven and undeterred by skeptics, Sydney single-handedly oversaw the reclamation from start to finish, acting as chief fundraiser, public advocate, canny negotiator, and lead designer. No detail, from a superlative sound system to the color and comfort of the seats, escaped her attention.