Millett Opera House
Austin, Travis County, Texas
Marker Inscription
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
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Lumber dealer Charles F. Millett opened this limestone opera house in 1878, giving Austin an 800-seat stage that drew stars such as Edwin Booth and Sir Henry Irving. It also hosted legislative sessions, inaugurations, and, in 1899, a speech by presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan, before being enlarged with a third story and a classical portico.
Why it matters
In the Gilded Age it was Austin's civic and cultural heart, a single hall where theater and politics met.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Charles F. Millett
- · William Jennings Bryan
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Old Bakery
Austin, TX
Built in 1876 by Charles Lundberg, this Austin bakery served an era when bread came unsliced and unwrapped, carried home hot in baskets by children and household help. Its specialties ran to ladyfingers, glazed kisses, and almond macaroons, and a later baker photographed passing parades from a now-vanished front balcony. The building now serves as the Austin Heritage Society's tourist information center.
Paramount Theater
Austin, TX
Businessman Ernest Nalle built this downtown Austin theater in 1915 as the Majestic, designed by a Chicago architectural firm and raised under a local architect's hand. Renamed the Paramount and lavishly remodeled in the 1930s, it hosted traveling vaudeville, stage drama, musical productions, and motion pictures across generations. It remains one of Austin's enduring landmarks of live and screen entertainment.
Openheimer-Montgomery Building
Austin, TX
This commercial building went up in 1894 for Louis Openheimer, a Texas military, business, and civic figure, and was designed and built by John McDonald, who served as Austin's mayor from 1889 to 1895. In 1899 it was sold into the estate of 12-year-old Fannie Montgomery. Its Queen Anne styling—projecting second-story bay windows carried on jigsawn Victorian brackets—marks it as a fine example of late-19th-century commercial architecture.
Texas Highway Department
Austin, TX
Created on April 4, 1917, as automobiles were revolutionizing travel and farmers demanded all-weather roads to market, the Texas Highway Department set out to organize a statewide system backed by federal matching funds. A one-cent gas tax after 1923 and New Deal relief funds during the Depression fueled massive road building, and in 1933 the agency completed this headquarters building. From here DeWitt C. Greer led the department for decades; the building was later named in his honor.