Casino Club

The club began with twenty German men meeting for conversation and was chartered in 1857 with 106 members, all German Texans. Its Market Street building, opened in 1858, had a bar with skat tables and a reading room on the west, a ballroom that turned into a theater with stage and balcony in the center, and a salon on the east. Each month brought a concert or amateur play followed by a dance, and children had their own Kinderball and Maskenball. The building was sold in 1923, and the club was still listed into the early 1960s.

What the plaque says

Casino Club Property of Casino Association, organized 1853 among cultured German settlers. Club house and opera building, erected 1858, had a theatre; a hall seating 700; banquet rooms; club rooms. Setting during Civil War for military balls, entertainments, suppers; tableaux, concerts and minstrel shows to benefit the Confederate cause; and meetings of ladies to roll bandages. The owners obtained the best artists of the day to perform here. In the 1850s one noted guest was Col. Robt. E. Lee. Later audiences included Gen. U.S. Grant and Buffalo Bill. (1965)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• The Alamo — steps away
  Mission San Antonio de Valero before it was a fort: a church its builders never finished, a thirteen-day siege in 1836, and the Army gable of 1850-52 that became its emblem.
• San Antonio River Walk — 0.2 mi
  A Depression-era park one level below downtown, built because San Antonio refused to pave its river after the 1921 flood, and designed by an architect the project later fired.
• La Villita Historic Arts Village — 0.2 mi
  The little village across the river from the presidio, where Cos surrendered San Antonio in 1835, rebuilt by Depression-era youth crews as a working crafts village.
• San Fernando Cathedral — 0.3 mi
  The Canary Islanders' parish church on Main Plaza, where Bowie married and Santa Anna raised a red flag, rebuilt in Gothic Revival around the walls of the 1750s church.

More markers nearby

• Site of the Old Adobe — steps away
• Groos National Bank — steps away
• Alamo Low Barracks and Main Gateway — steps away
• Menger Hotel — steps away