Wally Heider Recording Studio

 Posted by on November 8, 2013
Nov 082013
 

245 Hyde Street
The Tenderloin

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The blue building hidden behind this tree (the fourth film vault) has a prominent place in San Francisco Music history as well.

Wally Heider Recording

In early 1969, Wally Heider opened the San Francisco Wally Heider’s Studio at 245 Hyde Street.  Heider had reportedly apprenticed as an assistant and mixer at United Western Recorders in Hollywood, CA, with Bill Putnam, “The Father of Modern Recording”, and he already owned and ran an independent recording studio and remote recording setup called Studio 3, in Hollywood, California.

In 1967, Heider had been involved in live recording at the Monterey Pop Festival. Artists like Jefferson Airplane, Quicksilver Messenger Service and The Grateful Dead had been recording in Los Angeles and New York, and Heider saw the need for musicians involved in the San Francisco Sound to have their own well equipped and staffed recording studio close to home.

The studios were built by Dave Mancini while Frank DeMedio built all the studios’ custom gear and consoles, using UA console components, military grade switches and level controls, and a simple audio path that had one preamp for everything. The console was designed with 24 channels and an 8-channel monitor and cue, which was replicated in both the Studio 3 setup in Los Angeles and the remote truck. The monitor speakers were Altec604-Es with McIntosh 275 tube power amps.

Wally Heider Studios

This building still houses Hyde Street Studios.

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There are several Tenderloin plaques.  They celebrate all parts of Tenderloin history and culture, including the first hard-core adult feature film shown in the U.S. at the Screening Room, 220 Jones Street, Sally Rand’s burlesque fan dances at the Music Box now Great American Music Hall, 859 O’Farrell Street, the former B’nai Brith, 149 Eddy Street, the former Original Joe’s, 144 Taylor Street, and the former Arcadia Dance Pavilion/Downtown Bowl at the corner of Eddy and Jones Streets at Boedekker Park.

A $12,500 grant from SF Grants for the Arts funded the sidewalk plaque project. Centrix Builders provided expertise in metal work with installation by Michael Heavey Construction.

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Further reading from people that were there, about the amazing history of this building under Wally Heider and other recording/ film studios:

Beyond Chron

Found SF

Film Vaults of the Tenderloin

 Posted by on November 7, 2013
Nov 072013
 

245-259 Hyde Street
The Tenderloin

 Film Vaults of San Francisco 1930's

I have driven by this area with these stunning Art Deco/Art Moderne buildings all in a row, and never pursued the history.  An evening of beers at the Brown Jug with Mark Ellinger and my eyes were opened.

Originally theaters purchased the films they showed their patrons. Then Harry, Herbert and Earle C. Miles, San Francisco brothers, realized there was a business in buying films in bulk and renting them to movie houses. Their original distribution centers were on Market Street/Golden Gate Avenue.

Inside these four buildings were film vaults with thick concrete walls and big iron doors with elaborate sprinkler and ventilation systems.  The reason is, the original films were highly flammable nitrate-based.  Movie theaters frequently caught fire because of these flammable films, even more reason for a delivery system.  In the 1950’s a less flammable form of acetate based film, actually called safety film, came into existence.

 

MGM Lion

The first building of the series is the MGM Film Vault, distinguished by the MGM Lion.

 MGM Grand Film Vault SF

These four buildings are built on two lots.  The MGM and the Comedy and Tragedy buildings were on one lot (255-259) and the brown building and the blue building hidden behind the tree were on a second (245-251).  These now all sit on one lot.

According to Mark’s article at Found in SF  the original owners of the corner building were the Bell Brothers in 1930 and then Frank and Ida Onorato in 1947.

Until the end of the 1980s, businesses along this stretch of Hyde Street and around the corner on Golden Gate Avenue included Wally Heider Studios (now Hyde Street Studios), Monaco Labs and Leo Diner Films—a recording studio and motion picture labs/post-production facilities that, with the advent of acetate-based Kodacolor and black-and-white reversal motion picture film in the early 1950s, had taken over film exchange buildings.

Comedy and Tragedy on Hayes Street, SF

*Hyde Street Film Vaults

The architects were O’Brien Brothers and W.D. Peugh (1930). These gentlemen worked together on several buildings in San Francisco including the Art Deco Title Insurance Company Building on Montgomery Street, where you can read about their long history with San Francisco.

These buildings housed 20th Century Fox, Loews, and United Artists film exchanges as well.

Film Vaults of San Francisco's Tenderloin

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Ornamentation on one of the fil vaults

 

 

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