The Herbst Theater, a.k.a. the San Francisco War Memorial Veterans Building, which was originally built as a more utilitarian twin to the War Memorial Opera House next door, has been undergoing at $128 million seismic retrofit and renovation over the last two years. And now as the Chronicle shows us, ahead of its September reopening, the place has gotten new bathrooms on the main level, new dressing rooms, and fresh coats of paint all around.
The theater auditorium itself features eight beautiful murals by artist Frank Brangwyn that were originally done for the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition though they can easily be mistaken for works by Maxfield Parrish, who worked in a similar style.
Elizabeth Murray, the managing director of the War Memorial, takes us on a brief tour of the renovated building in the video above.