On the northeast corner of W. Washington St. and N. Belknap Ave., this limestone two-story building with a hipped roof was constructed between 1885 and 1891. Its distinctive Romanesque Revival-style design has been attributed to two different architects. The Texas Historical Commission, in its text for the Erath County Courthouse RTHL, attributed the design to J. Riely Gordon, who also designed the courthouse and the First National Bank building on the southwest corner of the town square. Local historian and native son C. Richard King wrote that J.J. Kane and son designed the Cage and Crow Building and Heck and Baker of Fort Worth built it. In 1886, Kane was the first president of the Texas State Association of Architects. Dr. M. Crow and his partner, J.J. Cage, renovated this building in 1899 to accommodate their new bank, Cage and Crow. Upon the request of Dr. Crow’s wife, Mollie, the second floor, identified as a “hall” on the 1891 Sanborn Map, became the Crow Opera House, where entertainers and musicians performed plays and concerts until after 1912. The facade of this building is 46 feet wide along W. Washington St. The first floor features two storefronts and each
has a central double-door entry flanked by two large fixed windows. Above the doors and windows are transom
windows. Each storefront has two cast-iron pilasters that support the upper wall and roof. The second floor of the façade features a central arched three-part bay window with two tall narrow arched windows on either side. Atop the façade is a decorative limestone cornice topped by a triangular pediment containing the words “Crow Opera House.” A small second-floor decorative turret projects from the corner of the building. Along the 80-foot depth of the west elevation on N. Belknap Ave., the first floor has 10 windows and an arched entry at each end. The second floor features a central arched bay with a row of five tall arched windows on each side.