Wichita Falls Opera House

The building outlived the opera. Cinema records credit the architects Pettigrew and Worley with the 1908 house on Indiana Avenue, which opened on December 21 as the Wichita Theatre and Opera House. The same firm remodeled it in 1939 in the Streamline Moderne style. By then the house held 1,203 seats and a single screen, and it passed through the hands of Interstate Theatres, Texas Consolidated Theaters and Plitt Theatres. It closed as a movie theater in July 1980, after more than seventy years on the same block of Indiana Avenue.

What the plaque says

Wichita Falls Opera House The Wichita Falls Opera Company was formed in 1908 to establish a theater in the city. The first seven directors were C. W. Bean, N. Henderson, J. L. Jackson, Frank Kell, J. A. Kemp, W. M. McGregor, and T. R. T. Orth. The project was funded by public subscription and the land for the opera house was deeded by J. A. Kemp and Anderson Bean. The building was completed the same year by the Fort Worth firm of Brown and Cramer. The first production in the new theater was the play "His Honor, The Mayor", which opened to a full house. In addition to drama, the building was also used for music festivals, concerts, ballet, traveling acts, opera, and for graduation ceremonies of the Wichita Falls High School. Celebrities appearing here during the early years included William Jennings Bryan, Anna Pavlova, Lillian Russell, Ernestine Schumann-Heink, and Evelyn Nesbitt. Later the interior was remodeled to accommodate motion pictures. Music for the early silent movies was provided by a mechanical piano. The opera house declined in popularity after the opening of the Municipal Auditorium in 1926. Later used as a wrestling arena, it was purchased by the Interstate Theaters, Inc. (1981)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• World's Littlest Skyscraper — 0.2 mi
  A four-story brick tower in downtown Wichita Falls, 40 feet tall and 10 feet wide, the leftover of a 1919 oil-boom office deal in which, the story goes, investors misread inches as feet.
• Kell House Museum — 0.5 mi
  The 1909 Classic Revival house of Frank Kell, the miller and railroad builder who helped make Wichita Falls a city, shown by guided tour with its family furniture still in place.
• Lake Arrowhead State Park — 12 mi
  A prairie park on the north shore of the Wichita Falls water-supply lake, which drowned the town of Halsell in 1965-66, with mesquite campsites, a lighted pier and more than 200 bird species.
• Clay County 1890 Jail Museum — 18 mi
  Henrietta's 1890 stone jail a block from the domed courthouse, now the county museum, with its original cells, a gallows that was never used and the sheriff's family quarters.

More markers nearby

• Site of: The Antlers Hotel Fire of 1929 — steps away
• O'Donohoe, John F. — steps away
• The Zale Legacy — steps away
• Wichita Falls Bank Robbery of 1896 — steps away