The five hundred seat Victoria Theater was built in 1908 as a vaudeville house named Brown's Opera House. Within a few decades, vaudeville was on its last legs, but Victoria, a true San Franciscan, had the talent to reinvent herself in response to changes in taste and technology and the fortunes of her neighborhood.

In the 1930's, like George Burns and others of her generation, Victoria left vaudeville behind and went into the motion picture business complete with dishware door prizes. In the 1950's, she changed her name to El Teatro Victoria and showed her movies in Spanish. In the thoroughly liberated 1960's, when other movie houses were being demolished or getting out of show business and settling into drab lives as chain stores or gyms, Victoria changed her name to the New Follies, and as a burlesque house, she strutted her stuff until 1976 when she took some well-earned time off for recuperation and a facelift.

Two years later, restored and refurbished, she was once again Victoria, and today she is the oldest operating theatre in San Francisco. In her long history she has presented Mae West, Whoopi Goldberg, Bill Irwin, Donald O'Conner, and Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Current Victoria presentations are eclectic, usually edgy, and include locally produced original plays, concerts, film festivals (the theatre has 16mm and 35mm capability), musicals, and international performing companies.