About CPF and the Awards
The California Preservation Awards are a statewide hallmark, showcasing the best in historic preservation. The awards ceremony includes the presentation of the Preservation Design Awards and the President’s Awards, bringing together hundreds of people each year to share and celebrate excellence in preservation.
The California Preservation Foundation (CPF), a 501c3 nonprofit, was incorporated in 1978. We now support a national network of more than 36,000 members and supporters. Click here to learn how you can become a member.
Theatre Project Team
Project Lead or Principal
Mark Hornberger – Hornberger + Worstell
Client or Owner Firm/Organization Name
Martin Robert – The Presidio Theatre
Lead Architect, Engineer, or Designer Address
Mark Hornberger – Hornberger + Worstell
Historic Architect
Ruchira Nageswaran – Knapp Architects
Contractor
Jeff Gherardini – Plant Construction Company, L.P.
Specialty / Sub-Contractor
Emily Brainerd – Auerbach Pollock Friedlander
Specialty / Sub-Contractor
Larry French – Auerbach Glasow
Consulting Engineer
Dennis Paoletti – Paoletti Consulting
Consulting Engineer
Paul Rodler – Forell/Elsesser Engineers, Inc.
Consulting Engineer
Jeffrey Blaevoet – Guttmann & Blaevoet Consulting Engineers
Landscape Architect
Barbara Lundburg – RHAA
The Presidio Theatre
The Presidio Theatre is a winner for the 2021 Preservation Design Award for Rehabilitation. Award recipients are selected by a jury of top professionals in the fields of architecture, engineering, planning, and history, as well as renowned architecture critics and journalists. Tickets and sponsorship options are available at californiapreservation.org/awards.
About The Presidio Theatre
The Presidio Theatre was recently rehabilitated and expanded to serve as a 600-seat multipurpose community theater that is suitable for a wide range of live performances, educational programs and as an events venue, with on-site facilities for backstage functions and visitor amenities. A full seismic and systems upgrade as well as site work and landscaping was completed in order to bring the building and site up to current fire, life-safety, and accessibility codes and to address Presidio Trust standards. The existing stage area — only 16-feet-deep — was inadequate to accommodate live dance and theatrical performance requirements and needed to be increased in depth. In order to provide this increased depth without moving the exterior walls of the theater building, the historic proscenium surround was moved (as a single intact element) southward into the volume of the auditorium space. The lobby and front-of-house spaces were retained with all finishes and features restored and the 1939 ticket booth re-constructed based on original WPA-era drawings. New elements complementing and expanding the existing Theatre building are comprised of separate north and south pavilions, an addition along the north rear-stage facade, and below-grade construction of new spaces. The walls of the pavilions are faced with opaque fiber-cement panels with metal trim, all differentiated from the board-formed concrete walls of the historic building but matching its “Presidio White” color. Exterior walls of the south pavilion are clear vision glass, thus reducing its visual weight, and allowing its functional role (as a circulation container) to be visible from the exterior.
