Many today know the Boulder Theater as one of the city’s most iconic concert venues. But during its long life, the venerable theater has played host to a myriad of artistic and cultural events from movies and film festivals to weddings and private events.

The theater, located just off the Pearl Street Mall at 2032 14th St., has become a Boulder landmark as immediately recognizable as the city’s Art Deco courthouse, the Boulder Bandshell or the Boulder Dushanbe Teahouse. But after nearly a century of hosting all types of entertainment and cultural events, the theater building is in need of some TLC.

The building’s stucco facade has begun to crack, an outward sign of wear wrought by years of water damage. The cracks are not only a cosmetic flaw but also a safety risk. And Historic Boulder, Inc., a nonprofit preservation advocacy group, is working to raise funds in hopes of restoring the building to its former glory.

Leonard Segel and Ruth McHeyser of Historic Boulder say the theater is important to preserve as an “anchor” for downtown Boulder, especially since about 100,000 people per year come to visit it. Locals and tourists also stop and take photos of the building as they pass.

The theater is “certainly an anchor to the success of the Pearl Street Mall, because these people are coming before and after the show, and they’re going to restaurants, they’re shopping, they’re staying at lodging,” Segel said. “So it is a real, huge benefit to have the theater be as successful as it can be, (and) not falling apart.”

The aging theater is set to undergo restoration work starting this spring and lasting for a couple of months. The planned restorations should help spruce up the exterior of a storied landmark with a history that goes back to the 1930s.

Historic Boulder also plans to host a benefit concert and party on Jan. 26 to not only fundraise for the restoration work, but also promote community awareness about the Boulder Theater’s cultural and artistic heritage.

The project coincides with a time in which Boulder awaits a decision by the prestigious Sundance Film Festival to possibly relocate to one of three cities, with Boulder poised as one potential landing spot.

Boulder Theater: From movie theater to all-purpose event venue

The site where the Boulder Theater now sits has been associated with arts and culture for almost 120 years, beginning when the Curran Opera House opened there in the early 1900s.

“Back then, it was all live entertainment. That was before movies or radio or anything,” McHeyser said. “But within a few years, silent films, and then movies, really became the dominant use in that building.”

By the 1920s and 30s, movies had taken the U.S. by storm, and movie palaces had become “all the rage,” according to McHeyser. So, in 1936, during the Great Depression, the Boulder Theater was built at the former opera house site. McHeyser said the theater was meant to rival some of the grand theaters on the East Coast.

As the Boulder Theater was being designed, the Art Deco aesthetic — which Segel describes as a celebration of the Roaring 20s, the advent of automobiles and the ascendance of the U.S. to a prominent spot on the world stage — had become popular in Boulder. The building reflected the style of its time, from the neon-lit marquee over the entrance to the colorful terra cotta tiling that adorns the front of the building. The tile work features a rising sun motif, a common Art Deco theme.

For almost the first half of its life, the Boulder Theater was exclusively a movie theater. Once upon a time, there was also another movie theater down the street from it, according to Segel.

“It was such that kids could go to a movie there in the morning and here in the afternoon, or vice versa,” he said, adding that kids could get reduced or free admission if they brought in empty cartons or bottles. “There’d be lines around the block of kids, and their parents were not allowed in.”

But in the 1970s, multiplex theaters came to the Basemar, Village and Crossroads shopping centers, and the four movie theaters in downtown Boulder — including the Boulder Theater — closed down because they couldn’t compete.

The theater went up for sale in 1978 and was nearly demolished. Because it was designed as a movie theater, it was hard at first to envision using the building in any other way. Several different owners tried to use the theater for a variety of different purposes through the mid-1990s, but those efforts never took off.

Segel said things began to turn around for the Boulder Theater after the Z2 Entertainment group and owner Doug Greene took charge. Now, the theater is a thriving event venue with a lineup of concerts, events (including the Boulder International Film Festival), private events and more.

“We love adaptive reuse. We love buildings to have a new life,” he said. “It was a movie theater, but then it’s an event center, and sometimes they have weddings there, and they have sorority events, … (University of Colorado Boulder) events there — it’s really great that a building can have a variety of uses beyond its original intended use.”

A much-needed Face lift

In the 1970s, when the theater’s future was uncertain, historic preservationists, including some members of Historic Boulder, bought the building and secured an official historic landmark designation for it.

The theater was among the first 10 historic landmarks in Boulder. The preservationists then sold it to a local owner group, but Historic Boulder retained an easement on the theater facade, and its members have been keeping tabs on the theater’s condition over the years.

Several years ago, representatives from Historic Boulder started to notice cracks on the Boulder Theater’s stucco facade. Engineers analyzed the facade and found that about half of the exterior surface was damaged from water leaks. The top of the front wall had deteriorated and was allowing water to leak downward, although that area has since been repaired. The structural wall behind the stucco is damaged, and there’s a risk the stucco could start falling off in pieces.

The water damage behind the stucco is “almost like a cancer,” McHeyser said.

“You don’t know what’s going on behind (the facade). And it’s just started to show up recently,” she said.

The work to “Save the Face” of the Boulder Theater is set to start in April and wrap up by this summer. The main goal of the restoration will be to restore the stucco on the facade, repair the structural wall and replace the existing windows, which are not the original windows, with historic replicas. Although the stucco has undergone repairs over the years, it is still the original stucco from when the theater was first built. The marquee will also be cleaned and some of the tile work will be repaired.

About half of the money for the restoration, more than $227,000, will come from grant funding through the Colorado State Historical Fund. The rest of the funding will come from owner Doug Greene, Z2 Entertainment, and Historic Boulder. To cover Historic Boulder’s roughly $74,000 portion of the payment, Segel and McHeyser hope to raise funds through the upcoming benefit concert on Jan. 26.

The Save the Face benefit concert will feature Face Vocal Band, a Boulder-based male a capella group. All ages are welcome at the concert, and reduced or free admission will be available for kids, though there will be an open bar serving adult beverages during the show.

Doors open at 6 p.m. for general admission, but VIP tickets will also be offered. At 7 p.m., the concert will start with an introduction by Historic Boulder and an eight-minute documentary on the theater. The Face Vocal Band will start playing at 7:30 p.m. and will perform a variety of top-10 pop cover songs. The show is slated to end by 9:30 p.m.

Tickets can be purchased, or donations can be made, at givebutter.com/FaceConcert. All proceeds will go toward the preservation of the theater.