Barrio Jewel
Fort Worth’s historic Rose Marine Theater — now the Arts de la Rosa Cultural Center — is a vital and vibrant Latino touchstone
Originally a movie theater and for years an art and cultural ceter, perhaps the best description of Fort Worth’s Rose Marine Theater, now the Artes de la Rosa Cultural Center, comes from a woman with firsthand knowledge. “It’s this little jewel in the barrio of the northside,” says Rosa Herrera, a former board member of the Cultural Center. “T’d go there as a little girl.”
Similar characterizations have, no doubt, been repeated hun-dreds, even thousands of times, by visitors to what began in December 1917 as the Rose Marine Theater. The Cultural Center’s centennial was celebrated Oct. 12, 2017, with the screening of a documentary about the life of Dolores Huerta, who, with Cesar Chavez, co-found-ed the National Farm Workers Association.
Huerta, 87, was present at the screening. Much to her surprise, so was José Maria DeLeon Hernandez, better known as “Little Joe” and founder of the popular Tejano band Little Joe y la Familia.
“He came in singing ‘Las Nubes,'” Herrera says. “To the farm workers, that was their national anthem.” The title translates to “The Clouds” and
was popular with oppressed farm workers, Herrera says, the people Huerta fought to help. “Music,” she says, “was their way of letting out their emotions.”
During part of its history, the Rose Marine Theater was a place Hispanics could hear music or see Spanish-language films. Today, it is listed in the National Register of Historic Places and has received numerous
prestigious awards, including a 2005 Kennedy Center Award as one of the nation’s standout ethnic-specific performing arts organizations.
Left The theater in the 1920s as the Rose Marine Theater — now the Artes de la Rosa Cultural Center — has a legacy of presenting Spanish language films to Fort Worth’s Hispanic population. Right The theater recently celebrated its 100-year anniversary with a screening of a documentary about Dolores Huerta, co-founder, along with Cesar Chavez, of the National Farm Workers Association. Huerta was in attendance at the screening.
The Cultural Center’s mission statement reads that Artes de la Rosa “is dedicated to pre- serving, promoting, and interpreting the art, culture, lives, and history of the Latino community.”
All of that is important to people like Herrera and founding and current board mem- ber Steve De Leon. Two key figures in the life of Artes de la Rosa were Louis Zapata and Jim Lane. In fact, if it hadn’t been for them, De Leon notes, the cultural center might not exist today. They were instrumental in getting financial sup- port for the conversion from an aging movie theater to a modern cul- tural center. Zapata, who died in 2014, was Fort Worth’s first Hispanic city councilman. “He had the original idea,” De Leon says, “of converting the theater.”
Lane is a Fort Worth lawyer, former city councilman and board member of Artes de la Rosa. Lane and Zapata, in fact, gave De Leon his first tour of the theater. A retired engineer with Lockheed Martin, De Leon also loves the arts. But when he saw the dilapidated building, his first thought was that it would be cheaper to bulldoze it than try to restore it.
But the bulldozer never arrived, thanks to Zapata, Lane, De Leon, Herrera and others who cherished the theater’s legacy and saw its potential.
That legacy and potential was evident the night Dolores Huerta came for the screening of the documentary about her life. Herrera, a close friend, says high school and college students were among the guests — an important audi- ence to hear about the culture and struggles of Hispanics.
The documentary, and the woman herself, made an impact on the younger generations that night. Herrera was pleased it happened in the historic Rose Marine Theater. “They went away with so much emotion,” she says. “We never knew.”
