212 to serve as an entertainment hall for its members, the Bayview Opera House was designed by prominent German architect Henry Geilfuss, who would later be responsible for crafting much of the city’s eponymous Victorian architecture. Originally built in 1888 by the San Francisco Masonic Lodge No. Nearly a year into the pandemic, the theater is serving a new purpose: as a free COVID-19 testing site serving the Bayview-Hunters Point neighborhood, which has had some of the highest case rates in the city.Īnthony Bell is a UCSF medical student volunteering at the Bayview Opera House's COVID-19 testing site on behalf of the Rafiki Coalition. There’s no show on this brisk, sunny Monday afternoon, but a line of residents has queued up outside of the venue anyway, patiently waiting on blue chalk X’s marked on the sidewalk. Today, the gold lettering embossed on front of the building’s historic entryway still bears its original name – South San Francisco Opera House – surrounded by antique filigree, but it’s unusually quiet, save for the occasional clang-clang of a Muni train passing by. At the corner of Newcomb Avenue and Third Street in San Francisco, a 133-year-old theater stands tall in spite of its tumultuous history.įor decades, the Bayview Opera House has buzzed with activity, hosting theatrical performances, music and dance classes as well as a variety of community programming.
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