Picture Henry Greenwall raising $100,000 to build this Romanesque Revival house at 2020 Post Office Street. Imagine Henry Greenwall — often spelled Greenwald — who in 1894 closed his Tremont Opera House at 23rd and Market Streets and raised $100,000 to build this very house. The Grand opened on January 3, 1895 with a live performance of the play The Daughters of Eve, and today it seats 1,040 people.
This building has a life in layers: it began as a major live performing arts theatre, passed through a Vaudeville phase, then quietly evolved into a movie house. That movie house closed in 1974 and was purchased the same year by the Galveston County Cultural Arts Council. In 1993 the 73rd Texas Legislature even named it "The Official Opera House of Texas." It has also endured Galveston’s fiercest weather, standing through the Galveston Hurricane of 1900, the Galveston Hurricane of 1915, Hurricane Carla, and Hurricane Ike.
Notice the Romanesque arches that have outlasted vaudeville, movie nights, and four hurricanes, still holding stories in their beams and seats.