Crow Opera House

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Somewhere in Erath County stands a limestone building with two floors and a whole lot of story packed into both of them. The building went up before 1892, and right from the start, the ground floor was all business.

That's where the Erath County National Bank set up shop, with Dr. M. S.

Crow serving as president. Now, Dr. Crow was clearly a man of standing in this county, but here's the thing about this particular story.

The most consequential idea in it didn't come from the president of the bank. It came from his wife. Mollie Jane Crow looked at that top floor and saw something her husband apparently hadn't thought to see.

She suggested they use it for cultural events. And that, friends, is how a bank building got a second life entirely. The upper floor became an opera house auditorium.

Four hundred persons could pack in there, give or take, and they came for theatrical productions, they came for dances, they came for the kinds of town gatherings that stitch a community together. For years, that top floor rang with music and performance and the particular electricity of a crowd enjoying itself. Then came the motion pictures.

By 1920, the rise of moving pictures had drawn the curtain on the opera house's run. The auditorium quieted down, and other commercial enterprises moved into that Romanesque style limestone building in the years that followed. The bank floor, the opera floor, and eventually just a fine old structure holding whatever the town needed next.

Mollie Jane Crow suggested one good idea, and Erath County is still living with it.

What the marker says

The first floor of this limestone building, erected before 1892, housed the Erath County National Bank, with Dr. M. S. Crow as president. His wife Mollie Jane Crow suggested use of the top floor for cultural events. The opera house auditorium, which held about 400 persons, was the site of theatrical productions, dances, and town gatherings. Its use declined by 1920 with the rise of motion pictures. Other commercial enterprises later occupied the Romanesque style structure. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1977