Charline McCombs Empire Theatre

The corner of Houston and St. Mary's Streets held a theater long before the Empire. Thomas F. Brady, an insurance broker and real estate investor, bought the old Turner Halle there in 1890, and from 1900 to 1912 his brother James ran the Empire Opera House on the site. In 1914 Brady replaced it with an 8-story steel-frame office building designed by the St. Louis firm Mauran, Russell and Crowell, with a theater built into it.

The new Empire opened on December 14, 1914, before a standing-room crowd of 1,800, showing the seven-reel feature Neptune's Daughter. A Hope-Jones Unit Orchestra, a theater organ, supplied the music. It was then the largest motion picture theater in San Antonio. Brady leased it for 15 years to W.J. Lytle, who also ran the Wigwam and Princess theaters. The lease called for 813 seats on the main floor, 603 on the second floor and 350 in a third-floor 'colored balcony.'

The flood of September 9, 1921, put water several feet above the stage, and the gilded plaster was probably painted over in a single color afterward. By the mid-1920s the Empire belonged to the Publix Theaters system through Lytle's San Antonio Amusement Company, but it had become a second-run house, overshadowed by the Aztec, the Texas and, from 1929, the Majestic next door. New lessees Edgar J. Uhl and Carl C. Wurzbach added General Electric sound equipment that year. After World War II the downtown audience moved to suburban theaters and drive-ins. By the mid-1960s the Empire was showing pornographic films, and it closed in 1978 after 64 years.

In 1988 the City of San Antonio bought the Empire and the Majestic and leased them to Las Casas Foundation. The Brady Building became apartments in 1992. A $3.5 million renovation, finished with a $1 million gift from Red and Charline McCombs, restored the gold leaf, and the theater reopened on April 2, 1998, as the Charline McCombs Empire Theatre. It joined the National Register in 1999 and now hosts concerts, musicals and other smaller stage productions, sharing backstage space with the Majestic.