The Uptown Theatre on Main Street in Marble Falls opened in 1942 and became a single screen movie house in the Streamline Moderne style, and it has closed and reopened so many times since that its history reads like a list of rescues. A fire shut it for a period. It came back in the 1990s as the Marble Theater, operated by Gene and Susan Spitzer, and closed again in the early 2000s, once a multiplex had opened in town. Russell Buster and his partner Brooks Blake reopened it in 2004 and spent tens of thousands of dollars on it, and it closed once more in 2012.
In 2014 it reopened under new management as a venue for live music and classic films, with Marcia Ball playing the grand reopening on 5 April and Michael Martin Murphey and Gary P. Nunn booked behind her. That run lasted until 2015, and another followed in 2019. The projection booth had held an old gas powered projector weighing thousands of pounds.
After more than a year of renovation it reopened again in April 2023, with live music most nights and a film one night a week, and its manager planned to turn the old projection room into a small museum of the building's past. Its opening year is itself disputed: a 1942 date is the usual one, but one local account says the building began as a hall for travelling entertainment and only later showed films.
Getting there
30.5713, -98.2779
Locations are approximate and may be inaccurate, on private land, or otherwise inaccessible. Check before you travel.