Salon Juarez

Salon Juarez, at 7320 Navigation Boulevard in Magnolia Park, was a two-story meeting hall built in 1928 by members of the Sociedad Mutualista Mexicana Benito Juárez, a Mexican American mutual aid society founded by sixteen men in Magnolia Park in May 1919. The society sold its members life insurance and gave them a social life, and its forty-eight by eighty foot hall served as a dance hall, cinema, theater, grocery and school where Spanish could be spoken, at a time when many Houston businesses turned Mexican Americans away. Architectural historian Stephen Fox described it as the first purpose-built, nonreligious public institution constructed by and for Houston's Mexican American community.

By 1930 Magnolia Park was the largest Mexican barrio in Houston, and the hall helped make it the center of the city's Mexican cultural life. The Depression undid the society's finances. At least two thousand Mexican Houstonians, about fifteen percent of the community, left the city, members could not pay their dues, and in 1932 the mutualistas gave up management of the hall four years after dedicating it. Neighbors came to call it Magnolia Hall, and over the years it was rented for dances, performances and community events.

In the 1980s and 1990s the building changed hands several times. A roof removed for replacement was never put back, the structure deteriorated, and the Greater Houston Preservation Alliance placed it on its endangered buildings list. In 2004 it was scheduled for a tax auction over nearly $20,000 in back taxes until the owner paid days before the sale. The hall has since been demolished, and by 2025 its lot on Navigation was empty. The society's motto was Unión y Progreso, unity and progress.