Waco Hippodrome

History

Waco History records that local backers led by Thomas Finnegan hired Roy E. Lane with Dallas architects Otto Land and Frank Witchell, and that the Hippodrome opened February 7, 1914, at 724 Austin Avenue with vaudeville and a ten-cent ticket. A 1928 projection-booth fire led Louis Dent to reopen it in 1929 as the Waco Theatre with a Spanish Colonial facade. SAH Archipedia notes it closed as a movie house and reopened in 1986 as a live theater; Waco History says a later restoration brought it back in November 2014.