Napa's Uptown Theatre reopens as a concert venue

When Napa's Uptown Theatre closed in 2000, some feared the art deco masterpiece would be lost to the wrecking ball.

But local builder George Altamura, who spent his childhood in the movie palace, bought the Uptown and vowed to restore it.

A decade later, the Uptown has reopened as a concert hall. Big Bad Voodoo Daddy opened the theater last weekend — the second show is Saturday night, headlined by Shawn Colvin.

Altamura's team has repainted the glorious ceiling murals, installed precise replicas of the chandeliers, and replastered the theater's exterior.

“We repainted the ceiling in the original colors,” he said. “Not one thing has been changed.”

That's slightly less true for the theater as a whole. The stage has been expanded outward to meet the requirements of national touring bands, rows are farther apart, and seats are wider to accommodate today's more commodious posteriors. When it opened, the Uptown held 1,350 seats; concessions to comfort have pared it down to 863.

Altamura didn't know about the ceiling murals when he acquired the theater.

“When I was young, I sat here with my girlfriend,” he said, “but I never looked at the ceiling.”

When Altamura bought the theater in 2000, its ceiling was blue.

“I thought I'd paint it gold,” he said, “but when we took the dividing wall down, we saw this (painted) lady. I said, jeez, what have we got here?”

He contacted officials at Oakland's Paramount Theater, another art deco treasure, who came to see the Uptown.

After carefully peeling off layers of paint, “I saw the beauty of the theater. It was all original,” Altamura said. “I said we gotta do it, we gotta make it back to what it was. We can't cover over this.”

Revealed were classically fanciful art deco motifs: a wind-blown woman playing a flute, another woman atop a horse in a garden setting.

“Luckily, it was just sprayed with blue paint,” Altamura said. “If it had been plastered, that would have ruined it.”

There are a few details on the ceiling that weren't there when the theater opened. Several small portraits of women are encased in circles.

Altamura pointed to one circle and said, “That's my daughter.” He redirected his gaze. “And those are my granddaughters.”

A 78-year-old general contractor and son of Italian immigrants, Altamura is a stickler for detail.

He wanted to replicate the Uptown's original light fixtures but couldn't find any pictures of them. He asked some elderly locals to draw them from memory, but the images were all different.

Finally, he found pictures and had the octagonal fixtures re-created, with a modern flourish: Push a button and the chandeliers lower to the floor, so bulbs can be changed.

The theater's sidelights are a golden shell design with iron accents.

“I saw them for $2,900 each in a magazine,” Altamura said. Not wanting to pay that hefty price, he had a company make a similar design “for 100 bucks each.”

Asked how much it cost to refurbish the theater, Altamura said he didn't know. When pressed, he simply said “millions.”

He says he's not skimping, noting he bought a state-of-the-art speaker system from Berkeley's Meyer Sound Laboratories.

Yet he sees the theater as a sound investment, part of Napa's revitalization along with the River Walk and new restaurants.

“It's like when I was young; people are out walking, going out,” Altamura said. “Napa's comin' alive.”

Upcoming shows feature Merle Haggard, Robert Cray, Ani DiFranco, Boz Scaggs, B.B. King, and Richard Thompson with Loudon Wainwright.

Theater manager Sheila Groves, who previously worked at Petaluma's Mystic Theatre, said ticket sales have been brisk.

The Uptown has two lobby bars serving beer and wine and hopes to get a license to serve spirits soon, Groves said.

Altamura is collaborating with several family members on the project.

His granddaughter, Jackie Altamura, worked on the theater's proscenium. Her fiancé, Colin Blackshear, was helping to paint the lobby's ceiling just before opening night.

“To work on this right after getting my master's in architecture, it's a dream come true,” Jackie Altamura said. “I'm glad to work with my grandfather — he gets things done.”

Michael Shapiro writes about entertainment for The Press Democrat.