Sugar magnate John D. Spreckels commissioned the imposing and elegant Baroque theater (1912) to celebrate the opening of both the Panama Canal and San Diego's 1915 Panama-California Exposition in Balboa Park. The lobby's walls and ceiling gleam with Predora onyx. Allegorical paintings decorate the proscenium and ceiling of the 1,464-seat auditorium, considered acoustically perfect and still in use for a wide variety of music, theater and dance performances.