The Metro Theatre building at 2055 Union Street in Cow Hollow has housed an Equinox fitness club since the summer of 2014 — a decade-plus conversion of a City Landmark that preserved the Art Deco facade and original marquee while rebuilding the interior entirely.

The marquee at 2055 Union Street in Cow Hollow still reads "Metro" and still glows after dark — a detail someone photographed recently and posted to r/sanfrancisco with a question that apparently still catches people off guard: how long has it been a gym?

About twelve years. Equinox opened its Union Street location in the summer of 2014, following an eleven-month renovation of a building that had operated as a neighborhood movie house through much of the 20th century and closed in 2006. Getting there took three years of city approvals: the San Francisco Historic Preservation Commission granted a Certificate of Appropriateness on November 16, 2011, and the Planning Commission signed off on a conditional use permit on February 9, 2012. The scrutiny was proportionate — 2055 Union is City Landmark No. 261, designated by ordinance in June 2009.

That landmark designation is why the marquee survived. It is also why two Anthony Heinsbergen Art Deco murals inside the building remained untouched during construction. What the Historic Preservation Commission authorized was interior transformation without exterior expansion: the original theater footprint — roughly 13,000 square feet — was rebuilt vertically, with three new full interior floors stacked inside to bring the total gym space to approximately 36,250 square feet. Ehrman Properties LLC filed the application. The building's silhouette from the street did not change.

John Klein, then Equinox's SVP of real estate, described it at the time of opening as part of a deliberate strategy: the company was "particularly excited about this location's adaptive re-use of the historic Metro Theater, which continues our tradition of developing locally inspired clubs within iconic properties," he said in a press release. The Union Street club was Equinox's fourth Northern California location at the time.

The theater closed in 2006 and the building sat vacant before the renovation got underway. Walking past 2055 Union today, the exterior reads as it always has — Art Deco proportions, the original marquee, the double-door entry. The seismic retrofit, the three new floors, the weights: all of it is inside, invisible from Union Street.