John Tyson Smith

Judge Smith's Upstairs Opera House opened in the fall of 1902 at the northwest corner of Bank and Fredonia streets. B. W. Van Allen's hardware store filled the ground floor, and a spiral staircase from the Bank Street box office led to a second-floor auditorium of about 300 numbered reserved seats. Touring companies played here, among them a W. C. Fields minstrel show. Cole Younger drew a full house in December 1909, and William Jennings Bryan spoke on November 18, 1910. The house closed in 1915 when Longview's first movie theater opened.

What the plaque says

John Tyson Smith (Oct. 29, 1846 - May 15, 1916) In 1855 Alabama-born John Tyson Smith moved with his parents to Upshur County, Texas. A Confederate veteran, he settled in Longview about 1872. He served as city tax assessor and was justice of the peace for two terms. He was elected to five terms as Gregg County judge, 1888-1898. Actively involved in downtown real estate development, he ran the Smith Upstairs Opera House, 1902-1915. Married twice, smith had six children who lived to adulthood. (1978)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• East Texas Oil Museum — 12 mi
  A Kilgore College museum that rebuilds the 1930s oil boom in a full-scale Boomtown with a general store, drugstore and newspaper office, plus dioramas, films and antiques given by East Texans.
• Starr Family Home State Historic Site — 21 mi
  Maplecroft, the 1871 Greek Revival house Frank Starr built in Marshall, with Ruth Starr Blake's glass and china, an 1880s kitchen restored in 2019 and a retirement home built for a formerly enslaved person.
• Harrison County Historical Museum — 21 mi
  Galleries in Marshall's 1901 courthouse that run from the Caddo to the present, with Wiley College, Lady Bird Johnson's inaugural gown and a military gallery across the square in Memorial City Hall.
• Texas and Pacific Railway Depot and Museum — 22 mi
  The only surviving building of the Texas and Pacific shops at Marshall, a 1912 Mission Revival depot saved from demolition in the 1990s, still an Amtrak stop, with a railway museum and a Mikado locomotive.

More markers nearby

• The Grove — 0.3 mi
• Longview Junction — 0.3 mi
• Noted Texas Leader, Developer, Conservationist, Carl L. Estes — 0.3 mi
• Delta Drilling Company — 0.3 mi