Art Deco San Francisco: The Architecture of Timothy Pflueger
"Generously illustrated...tome is the story of an immigrant's son who over a career that spanned 40 years would change the appearance of the beloved 'City by the Bay.' Poletti's tribute...is a landmark unto itself." Mercury News, Dec., 2008A thoroughly enjoyable monograph... unusually accessible text ... augmented with vivid new photographs from Tom Paiva   --San Francisco Chronicle: (8/12/08)Alley To Be Named For Famed Architect Pflueger,  "Timothy Pflueger is the greatest architect in modern San Francisco history, said Supervisor Jake McGoldrick, in seconding the resolution brought by outgoing board President Aaron Peskin. To honor him is a wonderful thing to do. My only regret is I didn't think of it.For the record, the resolution was proposed by Therese Poletti. The author of this year's enjoyable monograph Art Deco San Francisco: The Architecture of Timothy Pflueger, Poletti notes proudly that Pflueger is the first local architect to get his own alleyway. It's an honor reserved, until now, for such artistic characters as Jack Kerouac, William Saroyan and Isadora Duncan." -- John King  --San Francisco Chronicle: (December 30, 2008)Colorful new photographs by Tom Paiva bear witness to how much of Pflueger's best work has survived, while the text by Therese Poletti moves with brisk ease, whether explaining a design's evolution or recounting how this native San Franciscan forged relationships with politicians and clients - giving them straightforward but ornamented buildings while striving to incorporate fresh styles, since he once observed, "if we were to satisfy ourselves with the copying of the works of former times, what progress or advancement would come?" Ultimately, Pflueger was a serious architect with a common touch. When he died of a heart attack outside his club in 1946 at the age of 54, architecture lost a practitioner who might have made Modernism accessible to the masses.   --Architectural Record, January, 2009"The book, `Art Deco San Francisco: the Architecture of Timothy Pflueger,' illustrated with archival and new photos by Tom Paiva, was published by Princeton Architectural Press in 2008.Poletti uses the book as the basis for her lecture she will give Sunday inside the restored Pflueger-designed Alameda Theatre.It was Pflueger's eclectic design of his first movie theater, the Castro Theatre, in 1922, complete with a Spanish Baroque façade and Roman amphitheater ceiling in the auditorium, which took his work into a new direction -- the design of some of the most memorable movie palaces on the West Coast between 1922 and 1932.Pflueger's movie theater designs evolved and became cleaner and more original after the Castro, and reached their pinnacle with Oakland's Paramount Theatre in 1931, an Art Deco masterpiece with its stunning façade, lobby and auditorium.Only a year after The Paramount opened, Pflueger's Alameda Theatre debuted. It was Alameda's first and only movie palace. It had 33,400 square feet, 2,200 seats, one of the largest movie screens in the Bay Area and a beautiful Art Deco design, complete with a decorative original mural, plaster figures painted in gold and silver leaf and light fixtures and a richly woven carpet with warm colors. Outside, it had a blade sign that soared 70 feet into the sky with `Alameda' in big capital letters and a floral pattern with vines decorating the façade. Built in 14 months at a cost of $500,000, the Alameda Theatre instantly became the dominant building in the Park Street Business District." --Oakland Tribune