The Foundation for the Preservation of the Historic Millett Opera

The Millett Opera House is recognizable by its heavy, twenty-four-inch-thick limestone walls and its grand classical portico, which was added to the building decades after its original construction. Built in eighteen seventy-eight by local lumberman and former city fire chief Charles Millett, the structure was designed by architect Frederick Ruffini. Upon completion, it stood as the largest enclosed performance space in Texas, capable of seating eight hundred patrons who gathered to watch everything from Shakespearean tragedies to legislative sessions held while the state Capitol was under construction.