Royal Opera House comes to life
again as a downtown coffee house

By María Eugenia Guerra

The draw of the old downtown business district is nearly irresistible. The architecture of some of those hundred-year-old buildings fairly invites aesthetic scrutiny. Some of the old structures are good for a walk-by, and others like the elegant Royal Opera House are good for an up-close look at the grandeur and history of another era.
Constructed in the late 1800s and in remarkably good condition, with much of its architectural integrity intact thanks to present day owner Leling Huang, the Royal Opera House at 1209 Hidalgo has opened its doors as a coffee house, a juice stop, and a refresco bar.
"We bought it in 1989, because we needed a space for a retail store for general merchandise and writing instruments," said Huang, a Laredo restaurateur who is the owner of Tokyo Garden and the Royal Opera House Café. "We spent several years bringing the building into this century with repairs and construction. We finally opened El Oriente de Oro in 1994, but when the peso took such a devaluation that year, it put us out. I have leased the Royal Opera House out since then and it has been a series of night clubs. Its real use, though, because it is in walking distance of so many other businesses downtown, is as a daytime business. The coffee house is a business that downtown can count on for coffee or a quick lunch," Huang said of her new venture. "I feel the beauty of this old building, and I am very proud to own it and to keep it from deteriorating," Huang said of the structure that features 8,900 square feet at the ground floor. The labyrinthine theatre includes catwalks, a large basement, and the opera house's old dressing rooms. Huang, a native of Taiwan who came to Laredo in 1989, has taken great care to protect many of the theatre's carved relief figures behind plywood, sparing them over the years from the wear of club goers.
"When you walk into a building like the Royal Opera House, not only do you have a sense of the history that has transpired there, but you have a sense of the building's architectural integrity and a sense that making buildings like this is a lost craft -- a sensibility that this kind of building can no longer be replicated or repeated," said architect Frank Rotnofsky.
"The Beaux arts and classical styles of the Royal Opera House were designed to provoke in you the sense that you were walking into something important," Rotnofsky said. "This was how important public buildings were designed and made -- celebrated really -- in monumental style, something that you sense even all these years later," he continued. "It's a lasting credit to those builders that despite renovations for commerce, the architectural essence of the Royal Opera House has also managed to remain intact."
The two-story brick and block building features a façade of tri partite composition of base, body, and top; a curved metal canopy and a corresponding arched clerestory above it; Corinthian columns; and a frieze of repeated detail under the crown of the cornice.
"The proportion of the paned windows have a Moorish element to them," Rotnofsky said, "and what you end up with in the end is a style of its own that we identify as border vernacular."
Once a venue for opera and theatre with its own orchestra and host to performers like tenor Enrico Caruso, the Royal was also a movie theatre. A young Laredoan named Courtney Slaughter Proffitt, once known as "La Mariposa," sang from the stage of the Royal Opera House before going on to a long and much lauded career in voice.
Josephine Daiches Brand, who grew up in the old Depot District near downtown, recalled the performance of recitals and school programs at the Royal Opera House. "I was once a fairy in a dance recital and I remember that when we performed at the Royal my wings caught on fire. A man jumped on stage and put the fire out. I thought it was fun for the moment. I was five or six years old," she said.
"The Royal Opera House was the best place," Brand recalled. "I would go there with my parents to see theatrical productions, and on Sundays we would go to a movie there. A quarter got us into the movie and got us an ice cream later. It was within walking distance to our homes," she said, adding that among those who were her playmates and schoolmates were Gladys Sauvignet, Helen Dixon, Woody and Henry Bunn, and George Jackson. Brand also recalled that her commencement exercises from Laredo High School in 1927 were held at the Royal Opera House.
"Somebody kissed me on the stair steps at the Royal Theatre," remembered former Laredoan Elizabeth Nye Sorrell, who also recalled the 1927 commencement. "The attorney Robert Lee Bobbit was our speaker. I was wearing a dress made for me as a gift by America Meriwether's mother."
The Royal Opera House Café is managed by J.J. Limón. Its hours of operation are from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. The Royal Opera House is available for private parties, receptions, and class reunions. For further information, call Huang at 717-1001 or Limón at 726-3988 or 726-0710.