Heritage districts preserve vanishing LGBT history.

A man passes the Castro Theater during the annual Dyke March in San Francisco in June 2014. (Photo: James Tensuan / The Chronicle 2014)

There is some question about which of San Francisco’s gay bars was the oldest and longest operating. The Old Crow opened on Market Street in 1935, closing in 1980, while the Gangway on Polk opened in 1910, but was not clearly LGBT-affiliated until much later.