When restorers began peeling paint from the ceiling of the Uptown Theatre in downtown Napa, they were not expecting to find gods and heroes. But layer by layer, as decades of latex and enamel came away, an original Greco-Roman mural emerged — classical figures painted in 1937 and buried under successive renovations since the 1970s. Artists were brought in to restore the work to its original form, a process that took until 2009. The mural had survived being subdivided, neglected, and forgotten. In a sense, it had been waiting.
Lawrence Borg built the Uptown Theatre as an Art Deco showpiece, and its debut on August 12, 1937, was a proper occasion. The opening film was Ever Since Eve, a Warner Bros. comedy starring Marion Davies — light fare for a building that took itself seriously. The exterior was streamlined geometry in the Art Deco style; the interior featured the now-hidden ceiling mural and a 23-foot screen. For nearly two decades, the Uptown operated as Napa's premier movie house, a place where the valley's residents came to see first-run Hollywood films in a setting that felt like an event. Borg sold the theater in 1945 to the Blumfield chain, which upgraded the projection system to CinemaScope in 1954, installing a 40-foot screen to accommodate the widescreen format that was transforming the industry.
What happened to the Uptown in the second half of the twentieth century was a story repeated in small-city theaters across America. In 1973, the auditorium was divided in half to create a two-screen venue — a concession to changing economics that sacrificed grandeur for efficiency. In 1986, it was subdivided again into four screens showing second-run movies. The CinemaScope screen was gone. The mural was covered over. The building that had opened as a single, grand room was now four cramped ones. Ownership changed hands several times in the 1990s, each new operator hoping to reverse the trajectory. None succeeded. In 2000, the Uptown closed, defeated by falling attendance and competition from newer multiplexes that offered what the carved-up theater could not: comfortable seats, modern sound, and a sense of occasion that the Uptown had lost precisely by trying to compete.
Real estate developer George Altamura purchased the shuttered theater in 2000 with a vision that ran counter to the multiplex trend: restore the Uptown to a single grand room and reopen it as a live entertainment venue. In 2003, he announced a partnership with several investors, among them Francis Ford Coppola, the filmmaker whose own Napa Valley estate made him a neighbor with a stake in the town's cultural life. Exterior restoration was completed by 2005. Inside, the painstaking work of undoing decades of subdivision and neglect took longer — the ceiling mural restoration alone consumed years. Meyer Sound Laboratories, the Berkeley-based audio company, designed the venue's sound system. On May 14, 2010, the Uptown Theatre reopened with a performance by Big Bad Voodoo Daddy. The 863-seat room was whole again.
The 2014 South Napa earthquake, a magnitude 6.0 that struck in the early morning of August 24, tested the theater's resurrection. The ceiling — including the painstakingly restored mural — was damaged, and the building was red-tagged until structural engineers could confirm its soundness. They did, and repairs proceeded. On November 9, 2014, Ziggy Marley performed the first post-earthquake concert, a symbolic reopening that felt familiar to a building that had already survived worse. Since its 2010 rebirth, the Uptown has hosted Willie Nelson, B.B. King, Emmylou Harris, Merle Haggard, John Prine, Cyndi Lauper, Lyle Lovett, and hundreds of other performers. In 2022, the venue was purchased by John Anthony Truchard, continuing under the JaM Cellars Presents music series. The Uptown is no longer Napa's movie house. It is something rarer — a place where a painted ceiling and a well-designed sound system conspire to make live performance feel the way it did before screens replaced stages.
The Uptown Theatre is located in downtown Napa at approximately 38.296°N, 122.287°W, along the main commercial strip of First Street. From the air, downtown Napa is identifiable along the Napa River, which winds through the city center. Nearest airports: Napa County Airport (KAPC) approximately 5 miles south, Sonoma County Airport (KSTS) approximately 25 miles northwest. The Napa Valley stretches north-south below, lined with vineyards that are distinctive from altitude.