The Heights Theater

The Heights Theater is a 500-person concert room in Houston’s Heights, inside a 1929 neighborhood cinema whose 1935 makeover gave it the Art Moderne façade and vertical neon HEIGHTS sign seen today. The compact scale is the draw: a rebuilt two-story listening room pairs a movable low stage with a U-shaped mezzanine, letting the architecture of an early movie house frame contemporary club shows.

Fire, shell, and revival

Charles Wygant built the current theater in 1929 and leased its operation to his son Robert. Opening night, May 14, screened Zane Grey’s silent western Sunset Pass for a 750-seat audience. By 1935, air conditioning, a new Art Moderne exterior, and 900 seats reshaped the house.

The sharpest turn came in 1969. After protests around a booking of the Swedish film I Am Curious (Yellow), an arson fire on June 6 gutted the interior and collapsed the roof; investigators found an empty kerosene can, and no one was arrested. The building remained a roofless shell for years, then Gus and Sharon Kopriva bought it in February 1988 and restored it as an art gallery and performance space, reopening in 1989.

Dallas venue operator Edwin Cabaniss bought the property in 2015 and renovated it for concerts. The Heights Theater reopened as a live-music venue in late 2016, returning performances to a room whose original cinema function had long since given way to fire damage, gallery use, and preservation work.

The rebuilt listening room

Kessler Presents programs a ticketed calendar led by touring artists, with Latin-rooted rock, singer-songwriter country and folk, blues, R&B, jazz, indie-pop, tribute acts, comedy, and occasional spoken-word-style events all fitting the bill. Inside, the level-floor listening room faces a low movable stage; side and rear mezzanine seating wraps the room in a U shape. A curved lobby bar sits up front, while a second bar serves the mezzanine, making arrivals and set breaks part of the room’s flow.