The Grand Opera House and the adjacent Marks-Rothenberg Department store were built in 1889 by half-brothers Israel Marks and Levi Rothenberg.

In addition to the extensive theater renovation, the Riley Center project redeveloped the department store as a conference facility.

Factors that may have influenced the decision may have been: Seeking quality work, the Marks-Rothenberg partnership hired J.B. McElfatrick of New York and St. Louis to design the interior of the Grand Opera House.

"[4] The Opera House was completed in late 1890, in time for the December 17 opening with Johann Strauss's recent operetta, The Gypsy Baron (1885), performed by a German-language company from New York.

[4][5] Unlike these European works, most plays or entertainments produced at the opera house were simple melodramas that would have been very familiar to the city's residents.

[4] The demise of the Opera House began in 1923, when it was leased to Saenger Films of New Orleans, under title of the Plaza Amusement Company, at a cost of $1,000 a month for a period of 25 years.

[4] The lease was for thirty years, but in 1927, Saenger bought the larger Temple Theater and wanted to gut the opera house for use as an office building.

Because Levi Rothenberg, the previous owner (and builder) of the opera house had inserted a clause into the lease specifying that the building could be used only as a theater, Plaza Amusement abandoned it and refused to pay rent.

Over the next two decades, local efforts to "save the Grand Opera House" and restore the adjacent Marks-Rothenberg building garnered support.

[6] In 2000 The Riley Foundation made a $10 million grant for restoration, with a stipulation that Mississippi State University own and operate the center.