Contractor completes Rialto roof shortly before recent rains

Contractor completes Rialto roof shortly before recent rains

The Bee County Courthouse looms large in the background as two employees of Port Enterprises, Inc. brave June heat to lay down alternating layers of hot tar and roofing felt. The job left downtown Beeville’s historic Rialto Theater protected from recent rains which have drenched most of South Texas since the beginning of the month.

- The recent completion of the installation of a new roof on the historic Rialto Theater came just in time, according to Dr. John Hester.
Hester, one of the volunteers of the Hall-Rialto Preservation Association, said a temporary roof put on the building years ago had begun to leak and he was sure there would have been considerable damage to the interior of the building if volunteers had not opted to replace it.
The temporary roof was one of the first things the original group of volunteers voted to provide when they took over the building 12 years ago. Some of those responsible for the decision to have the temporary roof installed were Sarah and Marge Carter, Grace Beck, Ida and Wayne Dirks, Lin Cox, Sid and Donna Hall and Bob Horn, to name a few.
Thankfully, their decision kept the destructive forces of moisture out of the building while the group got busy with trying to find the money for a complete restoration of what used to be the center of entertainment in downtown Beeville.
“Without it,” Hester said, “there would have been no theater left to restore.” Until the temporary roof was built, rain leaking through what had been there before had caused considerable damage to the theater’s contents.
The temporary roof actually had begun to leak several years ago, Hester said. Thankfully, Beeville did not experience much heavy rain during that period. A half-inch would allow a considerable amount of water into the theater once the roof started leaking. Volunteers were worried about the damage the rain was causing.
Hester credited volunteer Wayne Massengale, vice president of the Rialto association, with pushing hard to have the temporary roof replaced with something that could stand up to the South Texas weather.
As soon as the association had enough money to take care of the job, Massengale enlisted the aid of Tom Marshall, a retired building contractor who has lived in Beeville several years now. Marshall contacted Jake Comstock of Port Enterprises, Ltd. of Corpus Christi and that group designed a new $45,000 top for the important historic site.
Fortunately, work on the new roof was completed just before the early July thunderstorms that left much of South Texas flooded. Those same storms have dumped more than 10 inches of rain on Beeville in the last couple of weeks. The recent rains, although badly needed here, would have caused even more severe damage to the theater’s interior, Hester said.