Site of Merchants Opera House

By the time the Merchants Opera House burned in 1914, Corsicana had picture houses taking its audience. A local history of early theaters says the Bijou was advertising by 1909, T. D. Garner enlarged the Majestic to 400 seats in 1911 and gave it the first organ, and the Queen opened on March 17, 1913. The Fifth Avenue was a Black-operated theater managed by Reed Conner. The opera house itself hosted a touring act, Sheppard's Great Novelties, around 1902 or 1903.

What the plaque says

Site of Merchants Opera House At this site in 1891, a group of businessmen built a three-story structure to replace the small Corsicana Opera House above city hall. The Merchants Opera House had stores and offices on the first two floors and a balconied auditorium on the top story. Opulently decorated in the style of the day, the theater seated up to 1000. Plays, minstrel shows, and musical concerts, featuring well-known performers, entertained audiences here. The building was sold, but burned in 1914 before it could be converted into a motion picture theater as planned. (1974)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Petroleum Industry Park — 0.3 mi
  The pipes and drilling tower mark where a city water well struck oil on June 9, 1894, the start of the first Texas field to produce oil and gas in important quantities.
• Blind Lemon Memorial Cemetery — 20 mi
  The Freestone County grave of the Texas blues singer Blind Lemon Jefferson, who recorded for Paramount in Chicago from 1926 and died there in December 1929.
• Ellis County Courthouse — 30 mi
  J. Riely Gordon's courthouse of 1897 in Pecos red sandstone and pink granite, with twenty-one carved stone faces and two cornerstones left by a quarrel over its building.

More markers nearby

• The Molloy Hotel — steps away
• Early Texas Natural Gas Pipelines — steps away
• Capt. Charles Henry Allyn — steps away
• The First National Bank of Corsicana — steps away