Texas Theatre

The Texas Theatre opened on East Houston Street on December 17, 1926, for Publix Theaters, the chain that showed Paramount's pictures and touring stage units. Local showman W.J. Lytle, who also ran the Empire for Publix, opened it as the chain's largest and most modern house in the city. Publix advertised it as "San Antonio's Two-Million Dollar Showplace." The Boller Brothers designed it with a terra-cotta facade of columns and multicolored arches topped by a tall vertical sign, and an auditorium of 2,752 seats under a plaster tented ceiling, with painted scenes on the side walls and an organ.

Five months after it opened, the Texas showed Paramount's Wings. William Wellman's World War I aviation picture had been made largely around San Antonio: the AFI Catalog records that the battle of St. Mihiel was restaged at Camp Stanley, aerial scenes were shot above Kelly Field, and Wellman's crew spent a year at the Brooks Field ground school. AFI says the film was previewed in San Antonio in the spring of 1927, in a fourteen-reel version later cut for release, before opening in New York in August 1927. Cinema Treasures dates the San Antonio showing to May 19, 1927, at the Texas, with stars Buddy Rogers and Clara Bow in attendance. Wings went on to win the first Academy Award for Best Picture.

The Texas ran for many years as a first-run house, one of downtown's big movie palaces alongside the Aztec, the Empire and, from 1929, the Majestic. Later operators included Santikos Theatres, Movie One and RG Theatres. It closed on September 10, 1978, with a double bill of Our Winning Season and Hi-Riders. The theater was razed in 1983, but its terra-cotta facade was kept and incorporated into the office building that replaced it, where it still stands on Houston Street.