The $500-million Academy Museum of Motion Pictures will raise the curtain this September on an eye-popping museum and theater complex that honors the past, is designed to resist future seismic forces and appears to defy the laws of gravity.
Although it is a landmark listed on the National Register of Historic Places, Alameda High School, built in 1924, had been vacated by students since 1978 and was fully shuttered in 2012.
Returning a two-story section of a corner facade to its 1912 Beaux Arts look sounds simple enough: Remove the modern replacement and install a precast concrete replica of the original.
On the contrary, there was nothing simple about the elaborate storefront job.