Businessman Robert E. Hicks commissioned the Balboa Theatre in 1924, engaging architect William H. Wheeler and the Wurster Construction Company as contractor for the $800,000 project. The single-balcony vaudeville and movie palace originally seated 1,513 and operated as part of the Fox West Coast circuit, featuring live performances and films accompanied by orchestra and organ. San Diego had three major downtown movie palaces within four blocks, all Fox houses at some point, including the California Theatre of 1927 and the Fox Theatre of 1929, now Copley Symphony Hall.
The exterior carries a distinctive tiled dome and Spanish Revival detailing, while the auditorium unfolds as a Moorish and Spanish fantasy characteristic of 1920s exhibition architecture. The signature feature remains the most unusual: waterfalls on either side of the proscenium arch provided air cooling through evaporative circulation, a theatrical solution to climate control before mechanical air conditioning became practical for large auditoriums. This visible amenity served both functional and commercial purposes in an era when theaters competed on comfort as much as programming. The building's idiom belongs to the same 1920s wave as the California Theatre's Spanish Colonial Revival and the El Cortez Hotel, all downstream of the 1915 Panama-California Exposition in Balboa Park.
