The Castro Theatre: A lesson on how to save Main Street

San Francisco's Castro Theatre is not just a classic cinema house. It's proof that even as the current of tastes and technology flow elsewhere, your local, single-screen movie theater can still be the center of your neighborhood.

Though the advent of multiplexes and DVDs has caused similar beautiful movie palaces to be flattened into parking lots or converted into chain stores, the Castro Theatre in San Francisco remains a center for community activity.

The Castro is proof that you don't always have to build anew in order to move on. Your area can economize by giving its old buildings new life, too. To start, you must remember how to make them important to your neighborhoods again.