Old Nacogdoches Opera House

Old Nacogdoches Opera House. . On 1889 John Schmidt purchase this lot. Before that time, the Mitchell Hotel (c. 1831), an early Nacogdoches stagecoach inn, stood on the site. Schmidt wanted a place for theatrical companies to stop over as they traveled between engagement in Shreveport and Houston. He commissioned architect D. Rulfs to build an opera house. The Nacogdoches Opera House had a ticket office and other businesses (at first general merchandise and a confectionery) on the ground floor. A wide staircase led to the second floor theater. The high ceiling of the second floor permitted the existence of a gallery. At the rear of the floor, the stage was flanked by dressing rooms and had an outside stairway providing access for actors and scenery. From early accounts, the stage was very small and could not accommodate all productions., While the theater did host opera performances, most of the touring shows were plays, melodramas, occasional burlesques, and magic shows. After the touring season, the theater became a favorite site for community recitals, benefits, town meetings, and dances frequently reviewed by the Daily Sentinel. In 1907 the paper reported, "a large crowd of dancers and several chaperones enjoyed a pleasant dance at the opera house.... The weather was cool, the music good, floor in good condition and everything was favorable for good dancing." At this site in 1907, the Nacogdoches Civic League and the Nacogdoches Fire Department were both organized. The Marx Brothers first developed their improvisational style of comedy in the Nacogdoches Opera House. During their act around 1907, a disturbance on Main Street caused most of the audience to run to see what was happening. Accounts differ, but either a runaway horse or a mule kicked a cart to pieces and dragged it down the street. The Marx Brothers, angered by the loss of their audience, began to race about the stage in a frenzy of comic behavior. Their parody of their own burlesque and their antics on stage brought the audience back and launched a new direction in their comic careers. According to Groucho Marx, this performance even spawned the first Groucho- ism: "Nacogdoches is full of roaches." He and his brothers were also arrested shortly thereafter for playing euchre, a popular card game, on the porch of their hotel., The building ceased to be a theater in 1923. Sometime after that, the new owner, D.K. Cason replaced the original red brick facade with one with less ornamentation and renamed the building the Cason Building. Later tenants included Cason-Monk Furniture, Mize Department Store, Architect Hal Tucker's office, and Hooper-Barr Art Gallery. In 2001, the D.K. Cason Estate gave this building to Stephen F. Austin State University's Real Estate Foundation for an arts center.