Image © SOM
The Strand Theater was built in 1917 on San Francisco’s Market Street. A long, narrow building, the theater initially served as a combination cinema and revue, showing second-run movies and hosting Vaudeville-style acts. But as the character of the city’s so-called Mid-Market neighborhood declined through the decades, the theater did too. It became a BINGO parlor, a revival house, and finally an adult theater before being shutdown in 2002 following a police investigation that revealed drug dealing and other illegal activity there. Now the theater is undergoing yet another transformation — this time into a contemporary playhouse.