The DeLUXE Theater

The DeLUXE Theater opened in April 1941 at 3303 Lyons Avenue in Houston's Fifth Ward as a movie theater for Black audiences. The 3200 block of Lyons already held the Crystal White Taxi Line and its businesses, and the 3400 block held the McGowen School, later Phillis Wheatley High School. The Handbook of Texas says the DeLuxe gave families a safe, family-oriented alternative to other Black neighborhood movie houses; a Texas Southern University instructor later called it "THE PLACE" for people to look forward to on weekends. The W.H. Schumacher design was Streamline Moderne, with about 740 seats. After the Civil Rights Act of 1964 ended segregated theaters, the DeLuxe declined and closed in 1969.

Two years later the Menil Foundation turned it into an exhibition hall. John de Menil enlisted two Texas Southern instructors, Jefferee James to publicize the show and Mickey Leland to help choose the site and coordinate it, and a construction crew converted the theater in three weeks, keeping the facade, lobby, and balcony, where old westerns and horror films could still be shown. Painter Peter Bradley curated forty abstract works by nineteen artists, Black and white, including Sam Gilliam, Ed Clark, Virginia Jaramillo, Larry Poons, and Jules Olitski. The De Luxe Show ran from August 22 to September 29, 1971; more than 1,000 people came on opening day and more than 4,000 overall. The Handbook calls it one of the first racially integrated exhibitions of contemporary artists in the United States. African art from the Menil collection was shown there for three years afterward, and until 1976 the building served as a gallery for the Black Arts Center.

The theater then sat empty for years. The Fifth Ward Community Redevelopment Corporation bought it and the furniture store next door in 1998 and formed a partnership with the City of Houston and Texas Southern University to restore it. Renovation began with a groundbreaking in 2014, and the DeLUXE reopened in 2015 as a community performing and visual arts center with a 125-seat proscenium theater. In September 2020 the Texas Commission on the Arts designated Lyons Avenue as the 5th Ward Cultural Arts District, with the DeLUXE as one of its gathering places.