Teatro Nacional

Sam Lucchese was born in Sicily in 1868, came to the United States in 1883 and, with his brothers, opened a boot and shoe factory in San Antonio. As the business grew he put his profits into real estate, and in 1912 he bought the Teatro Zaragoza, in the heart of the city's Mexican American community and then considered the center of Spanish-language dramatic entertainment there. With no theater experience, he first hired the Carlos Villalongín Dramatic Company and Juan B. Padilla to run it. By 1915 he was managing the resident company himself, hiring actors and touring companies and traveling to Mexico to sign talent.

Lucchese then opened a second house, the Teatro Nacional, at West Commerce and North Santa Rosa Streets. Cinema Treasures gives its opening date as November 2, 1917, with 1,000 seats behind a stucco front with painted filigree. It showed Spanish-language films and vaudeville acts from Mexico, and the Handbook of Texas calls it an integral part of San Antonio's social entertainment throughout the 1920s. In those years large touring companies from Mexico and Spain, with stars and full casts, played regular theaters in San Antonio, Laredo and El Paso.

Lucchese suffered a stroke in 1923 that limited his part in the theaters, and he died in 1929. When the Depression arrived, the Handbook notes, Spanish-language vaudeville, motion pictures imported from Mexico and Spanish-language radio replaced the stock companies. The Nacional closed for three months of renovation and reopened in December 1939 with more seats, to plans by architect N. Straus Nayfach. Nayfach later designed the Alameda for Gaetano Lucchese of the same boot-making family, who had already built two successful Spanish-language theaters in San Antonio before opening that 2,400-seat palace in 1949. The Teatro Nacional was later demolished, and the Centro de Artes stands on its site.