Architect Harrison Albright designed the Spreckels Theatre for John D. Spreckels, the son of sugar magnate Claus Spreckels and one of San Diego's dominant economic figures in the early twentieth century. Spreckels owned the Hotel del Coronado, the San Diego Union-Tribune, and wide swaths of real estate and transit infrastructure across the city. The theater that bears his name opened on August 23, 1912, and was constructed of reinforced concrete and concrete panels with architectural terra cotta manufactured by Gladding, McBean. Its ornate Baroque interior features an auditorium with no pillars or columns obstructing sightlines — an unusual design achievement for the period. The stage, measuring 82 by 58 feet, was among the largest ever constructed at the time of the building's completion.

The Spreckels is the kind of theater whose past performer list reads as a capsule of twentieth-century entertainment. Enrico Caruso, John Barrymore, Al Jolson, Will Rogers, and Abbott and Costello appeared in its early years of live theatrical productions. Ronald Reagan performed here. David Bowie. The Smashing Pumpkins. The Royal Shakespeare Company. The Kirov Ballet. Conan O'Brien broadcast his late-night talk show from the Spreckels each summer during San Diego Comic-Con from 2015 to 2019, bringing casts from Breaking Bad, Top Gun: Maverick, and Veronica Mars onto the stage. In 1931, the theater converted to first-run motion pictures. In 1976, Jacquelyn Littlefield, the daughter of its then-owner, restored it to live theater, bringing Broadway touring productions through the Nederlander Organization. When fire destroyed San Diego's Old Globe Theatre in 1978, the Spreckels hosted the Globe's entire 1978-79 season.

The Spreckels Building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975. A century after its opening, it remained one of downtown San Diego's most architecturally distinguished structures — six stories of concrete and terra cotta, a marquee over the main entrance, the kind of building that anchors a block and gives it identity. The theater was sold in 2021 and has been closed since. Plans for renovation exist. What the building becomes next is still being decided. Spreckels intended it as a monument to optimism and ambition — to a city celebrating a canal that would connect oceans, that would make San Diego a gateway to the world. The theater outlasted that optimism by more than a century. It is still standing.