Hoblitzelle, Karl St. John

Hoblitzelle's rules for his stages and staff shaped his circuit. The Handbook of Texas says that in 1906, as president of Interstate Amusement, one of his first acts was to censor vaudeville acts for family audiences and lift the "saloon" theater image. He gave employees of a year's service ten percent of profits. His movie houses offered children's cry and play rooms, children's chairs and earphones for the hard of hearing. After the Depression put RKO and Paramount into receivership in 1933, he reorganized their Texas theaters as Interstate Circuit and Texas Consolidated Theatres.

What the plaque says

Hoblitzelle, Karl St. John (October 22, 1879 - March 8, 1967) A young Missourian, Karl Hoblitzelle in 1904 helped produce the St. Louis World's Fair, where he gained respect for vaudeville. In 1905 he founded Interstate Amusement Company and opened theatres in Dallas, Fort Worth, Waco, and San Antonio. Soon he had theatres from Texas to Alabama. The Majestic Theatre was his headquarters for many years. About 1920 he began showing motion pictures. A pioneer in wiring for sound and in air-conditioning his theatres, he set national trends as an exhibitor. Prominent in planning the 1936 Centennial of Texas Independence, he also headed the 1945-46 celebration of a Century of Texas Statehood. Later he organized a foundation for promoting knowledge of Texas history. In 1942 he and his wife, Esther (Thomas), chartered a philanthropic foundation and channeled funds to schools, hospitals, agriculture, and other endeavors. Seeking to improve entertainment, he collected widely on topics as diverse as circus, cinema, opera and puppetry. In 1956 he gave his archives to the University of Texas at Austin as the nucleus for the Hoblitzelle Theatre Arts Library. The Medal of Good Merit was awarded to him by Pope Pius XII for his works in education and charity. (1979)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Dallas Museum of Art — 0.5 mi
  A city art museum that began as the Dallas Art Association in 1903, grew up in Fair Park, and has stood in the Arts District since 1984 under a forty-foot barrel vault.
• Dallas Heritage Village at Old City Park — 0.7 mi
  Dallas's first city park, laid out around Browder's Spring in 1876, now a museum of historic buildings moved here from across North Texas, among them Millermore, a cotton planter's mansion.
• The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza — 0.8 mi
  A plow-company warehouse of 1903, identified by the Warren Commission as the building Oswald fired from, now a museum on its sixth and seventh floors above Dealey Plaza.
• African American Museum, Dallas — 1.8 mi
  Founded in 1974 at Bishop College, a free Fair Park museum holding the Sepia photograph archive, African art and A. Maceo Smith's papers, and the story of the Hall of Negro Life.

More markers nearby

• City of Dallas — 0.3 mi
• Crockett, John McClannahan — 0.5 mi
• Nicholas Henry Darnell — 0.5 mi
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