Though the Castro district has been a distinctly defined neighborhood of San Francisco since the 1880s, the district did not gain worldwide fame until the 1970s when it became a mecca for a newly liberated gay community—in effect a west coast equivalent to New York's Christopher Street. It has been said that if San Francisco is America's gay capital, Castro Street is its gay Main Street.

The Castro district had a rebellious reputation from its beginnings: the street was named in 1840 for General Juan Castro, who led the Mexican resistance to white incursions into Northern California. By the 1880s, Eureka Valley, as it was then called, was a bustling working-class neighborhood, populated largely by Irish, German, and Scandinavian immigrants. After World War II, many of the area's residents joined the widespread exodus to the suburbs, leaving empty houses behind them. Coincidentally, post-World War II anti-gay...