Texas Venue Directory
Schroeder Hall
Honky-tonk and dance venue · Goliad
Schroeder Hall is a honky-tonk and dance venue in Goliad, Texas, with live-music and country-dance information when programmed. Find official links, directions, and current listings.
About this room
German settlers arrived in the 1840s and built the place up piece by piece: a school in 1870, a store in 1887, a blacksmith shop in 1889, a dance hall and post office in 1890, a cotton gin and gristmill in 1895. The settlement called itself Germantown until 1918, when its thirty-five residents renamed it Schroeder after Paul Schroeder, the first man from town killed in the First World War, a direct response to anti-German feeling. The hall that stands today is a later structure, roughly 14,000 square feet with a 6,000-square-foot oak dance floor. It has long been described as the second-oldest dance hall in Texas.
History sources checked August 29, 2026.
Things you may not know
- The town renamed itself after its own war dead to stop looking German. Germantown became Schroeder in 1918, honoring Paul Schroeder, the first townsman killed in the war. Thirty-five people made that decision. Source
- The dance floor oak was shipped in from a mill in Fort Smith, Arkansas. Source
- There was a chicken-wire fence between the drinkers and the dancers. The hall and the bar were separate buildings, and anyone who wanted to drink beer and watch the dancing for free did it from behind the wire. Source
- In 1950 men paid fifty cents and women and children got in free. Source
- Beer was not allowed inside the hall itself until 1960, the same year tables and chairs were added. Air conditioning arrived in 1969 and ran off a diesel generator. Source
- Roy Clark played his first dance here. Source
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