Michael Adkison/Houston Public Media
The Garden Oaks Theater, empty and partially taken apart amid a campaign to preserve it, on Aug. 6, 2026.
Walking through the halls of the Garden Oaks Theater, Maureen McNamara’s phone started ringing. She didn’t recognize the number but answered anyway. You never know who’s going to make a million-dollar donation, she joked afterward.
Since late February, Arthouse Houston, a nonprofit organization which McNamara directs, has campaigned to raise money to preserve the theater. Houston-raised filmmakers Richard Linklater and Wes Anderson have called for saving the theater, the latter of whom hosted a fundraising soiree for the theater. Houston philanthropists Bobby and Phoebe Tudor donated half-a-million dollars to the cause.
But the campaign is more than $5 million short of its $7 million goal to save the theater. A new owner, who did not immediately return a request for an interview, purchased the theater last fall and is purportedly planning to demolish the theater with plans for a shopping center.
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Michael Adkison/Houston Public Media
Maureen McNamara, director of Arthouse Houston, stands in the lobby of Garden Oaks Theater in Aug. 6, 2026.
“It would be a crime, and this would be a huge loss for our city,” McNamara said in an interview with Houston Public Media, standing inside the Garden Oaks Theater’s lobby, “when there’s so much possibility of doing something new and exciting for Houston.”
Today, the Garden Oaks Theater is dark. Some of the demolition had already begun before Arthouse Houston got involved. A neon sign in front of the building had come down. Bathroom stalls were removed from a women’s restroom. One of the handrails in the lobby had been removed — McNamara herself even went searching through scrapyards for that one, she said. As a result, the building is essentially without power; McNamara carried a flashlight through the hallways, laying out her vision of what the new theater could look like, if preserved.
Michael Adkison/Houston Public Media
The lobby of the Garden Oaks Theater. A handrail was removed from the stairs.
McNamara — who, by her own admission, hasn’t been sleeping since March — and Arthouse Houston have proposed revitalizing the theater into a new arts and film center, with work and event spaces, as well as a fully functioning historic theater. In order to develop that, though, the theater needs to raise $7.1 million in total.
It’s not the first time Arthouse Houston has lobbied to preserve a historic Houston-area theater. Originally founded as “Friends of River Oaks Theatre,” the nonprofit had first campaigned to relaunch the River Oaks Theatre as a revitalized film destination when it reopened in 2024. Both theaters were designed in the mid-twentieth century by a Dallas-based architectural firm, Pettigrew & Worley, in an art deco style.
Two years on, McNamara called the fundraising effort for Garden Oaks Theater much more difficult than that of River Oaks Theatre. Not as many Houstonians knew the Garden Oaks Theater as Garden Oaks Theater, as opposed to Grace Church Garden Oaks, which had occupied the building since 2008.
“Next to the River Oaks [Theatre], it’s definitely the historic cinema with, I would say, the most potential in the city,” McNamara said. “Other than, you know, some of our other spaces that are now a Whole Foods, a Trader Joe’s, an event center.”
Earlier this year, as she tells it, McNamara heard on a Friday that the Garden Oaks Theater was due for demolition the following week. By Monday, she appeared on Hello Houston to call for preserving the theater. Houston City Council member Sallie Alcorn heard that segment and looked into the demolition. Last fall, Grace Church Garden Oaks closed its doors and sold the building in a private, off-market sale.
Michael Adkison/Houston Public Media
The auditorium of the Garden Oaks Theater, seen while the building was unoccupied on Aug. 6, 2026.
“If it had been a public conversation rather than a private sale, then I think we would have been able to be part of that conversation from the start and the lift would not be so heavy,” McNamara told Houston Public Media. “But I think Houston is strong, and we can lift a lot.”
Alcorn arranged a conversation between the new owner, S. Jay Williams, and McNamara. Williams allegedly told McNamara he would sell the theater for what he purchased it for.
“He’s a businessman, he’s not a bad guy, but his plans are to tear down the building,” McNamara said on Hello Houston.
By the end of July — the original deadline for raising funds — Arthouse Houston had raised $1.8 million. More than a tenth of that had come from the Wes Anderson homecoming soiree last month, where Anderson visited his home of Houston to showcase some of his earliest works.
“You can’t build an old building,” Anderson said that night, according to a press release. “A beautiful, old place that has history and people’s experiences tied into it, and it has stories involved in it.”
Michael Adkison/Houston Public Media
The lobby of the Garden Oaks Theater on Aug. 6, 2026.
By the end of July, Arthouse Houston had secured a final extension with Williams to raise money to purchase and preserve the Garden Oaks Theater. It’s not clear that Arthouse Houston will be able to raise the final five million dollars to buy the theater for themselves, with just three weeks left until the final deadline.
McNamara still has visions for what the theater could be. Speaking with Houston Public Media, she pointed out areas that could become new workspaces for young filmmakers. The main auditorium could double as a concert or performing arts space. There could even be an authentic soda fountain on site.
A Houston Public Media reporter asked what she would do if she cannot raise enough money.
“Cry. I will cry,” she said with a laugh. “And I think everybody in Houston should cry.”