And the Bowling Balls, They Soon Will Come Tumbling Down

When it opened on Broadway in 1941 with a staff of 100 and 28 lanes, Tower Bowl was hailed as a “sports palace.” Its 80-foot-high sign with seven neon-lighted, rotating bowling balls became a landmark.

The balls are now rusty and stripped of neon, and the building that once housed two cocktail lounges, a dance floor, a billiard room, a kitchen and seats for 400 spectators, is being demolished.

S. Charles Lee, an architect noted for his “streamline moderne” theaters, including the Academy Theatre in Los Angeles, designed the 38,025-square-foot Tower Bowl that consumes most of the block bounded by C and India streets and Kettner Boulevard.

Just the stem of the T-shaped structure fronts Broadway with its boarded-up entrance and the once-spectacular sign. One-story businesses flanking the building on Broadway, such as a tattoo parlor, Pixie’s Coffee Shop and a jewelry store, appear squat next to the towering sign topped with a rusted 20-foot flag pole.

Bob Drexler, owner of a ship’s service shop next door, isn’t sorry to see the weathered sign go--”It’s an eyesore.”

The Tower building is being razed from back to front and the sign will have disappeared by the end of the month.

Although in 1980 the building was determined eligible for the National Register of Historic Places, it was never placed on the registry.

According to assistant city planner Ron Buckley, who works for the City Historical Site Board, building owner William Russo “didn’t have any interest in it,” and Buckley never brought it before the board.

“My bias was, it was not a terribly significant building. When it first opened it was an opulent piece of work, but it doesn’t retain enough of the integrity of what it used to be,” Buckley said.

“The Save Our Heritage Organisation and Historical Site Board were concerned and regret that it wasn’t designated. But no one ever took action to bring it before the board.”

As far as Buckley is concerned, “The only element worth saving is the sign.”

Tower Records was interested in installing the sign at its Sports Arena Boulevard store, but city height requirements for signs prohibited it.

“It hurt me grievously to have to tell them they couldn’t use it, it would have been nice--and appropriate. But we have a 30-foot height requirement at the coastal zone,” Buckley said.

Enter Bruce Pain.

Pain envisions those sheet-steel balls skewered on a new spindle, rimmed with neon and attached to a new shark-fin support in front of his new seafood restaurant downtown. The balls would progressively flash neon from bottom to top, just like effervescing bubbles.

Instead of the letters “BOWLING” and “The Tower Bowl” that mark each side of the globes, the balls would announce the name of 7th Avenue Seafood, accented by neon waves on the front of the 10,700-square-foot warehouse he is converting into a restaurant, catering kitchen and sourdough bakery. Pain plans to open the restaurant in the 300 block of 7th Avenue, two blocks south of Martin Luther King Jr. Way, in about four months.

“The Historical Site Board wants it restored exactly as is. I want to restore muted tones of blue and green, but with a wave on the wall outlined in neon and new lettering. I am offering the sign a new life, but done in the style of the period,” Pain said.

Pain is working to gain a permit to relocate the tall sign and to have it designated as a historical architectural feature. The designation, Pain said, would help attract investors because of the tax advantages. He estimated the relocation and restoration of the run-down 1941 sign would cost $40,000.

“The neon is gone, and I want to reconstruct it in its original Art Deco splendor,” Pain said.

Architectural, engineering and environmental studies must be conducted before the city will decide on Pain’s proposals.

Tower Bowl closed its lanes and turned off the flashing neon sign in 1961. A dinner theater cut up the lanes for tables, fashioned an entrance on C Street and staged plays until about 1977, a Centre City Development Corp. report said. The now-dilapidated building has been vacant since 1977.

The site was considered for a Hyatt Regency Hotel--until the convention center proposed for a site across the street was moved to the waterfront.

The Metropolitan Transit Development Board is studying a proposal that would use the land to link the C Street trolley line with planned extensions. The block has also been considered as a possible site for office buildings.

For now, building owner William Russo (who is no stranger to controversial signs--he also owned the Campus Drive-In decorated with the neon majorette), is converting the space to a parking lot. As for the sign, he is giving it away.

An art gallery owner recently took the neon off the sign with plans to sell it. And Pain plans to take down the balls within two weeks.

“I am not sure if the entire shark-fin wall behind (the vertical row of balls) can be moved or not, but we will dismantle the balls and put them in storage,” Pain said.

Making the move is a risk, Pain said, since neither city approval for the new placement of the sign nor committed investors have been secured.

“What I’m doing is taking a big chance,” he said. “I’m paying several thousand dollars to at least have the balls dismantled before we get involved with restoration and passage by the city.”

But the president of The Caterers, who is expanding his business and moving it from Kearny Mesa to downtown, considers it an investment.

“Not only are we saving an historical piece, I am getting a lot of publicity,” Pain said. “I want this to be a landmark for my company.”