DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Now, Charles F. Millett was a lumber dealer — not an impresario, not a showman, just a man who sold lumber.
And yet in 1878, he went and built himself an Opera House in Austin that would become one of the great cultural centers of the whole city. You have to appreciate the audacity of that. A lumber man.
An Opera House. Eight hundred moveable seats, plus boxes, if you please. Not a bench or a bleacher in sight — moveable seats, because this was a building that had ambitions.
Big ones. The kind that don't sit still. And those ambitions were well-placed, because the names that graced that stage read like a who's-who of the American and British stage.
Edwin Booth. Joseph Jefferson. Sir Henry Irving.
Otis Skinner. These were not small names, friend. These were the giants of the era, treading the boards of a limestone building in Austin, Texas.
Built by a lumber dealer. You can't make that up. But theater and opera were only part of the story.
The Millett Opera House was the kind of place a city reaches for when it needs to do something that matters. Legislative sessions were held there. Inaugurations.
Political conventions. Commencements. Balls.
Songfests. And apparently — and I love this detail — skating. The building hosted skating.
You'd walk in on a Tuesday and Edwin Booth might be delivering Hamlet, and you'd come back Saturday and the whole floor would be cleared for skates. That is a versatile room. Then came the tenth of March, 1899, and William Jennings Bryan — Democratic Presidential nominee — stepped up and gave a speech inside those limestone walls.
Eight hundred seats, presumably full, for a man who knew how to fill a room. The building itself kept growing too, kept reaching. Altered in 1896, then again in 1911, adding a third story and a two-story Classical portico, dressing itself up the way a cultural institution eventually decides it ought to look.
So there it stands — or stood, anyway, in all its altered limestone glory. A lumber dealer's dream that outlasted anyone's expectations, wearing its history the way Austin wears a summer night: warm, a little surprising, and bigger than it had any right to be.
What the marker says
Lumber dealer Charles F. Millett’s 1878 Opera House became a cultural center for Austin, The theater had 800 moveable seats, plus boxes. Operas and dramatic performances featured such noted actors as Edwin Booth, Joseph Jefferson, Sir Henry Irving, and Otis Skinner. On March 10, 1899, Democratic Presidential nominee William Jennings Bryan gave a speech here. Other activities included Legislative sessions, balls, inaugurations, songfests, political conventions, commencements, and skating. The two-story limestone building was altered in 1896 and 1911 to include a third story addition and a two-story Classical portico. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark – 1965