FLORIDA PLACE TO EXPLORE
Florida Theatre
Duval County · North Florida & First Coast
A 1,900-seat Mediterranean Revival movie palace of 1927 downtown, where Elvis Presley played six shows in 1956 with a judge watching.
ABOUT THIS PLACE
The Florida Theatre opened on April 8, 1927, at Forsyth and Newnan Streets downtown. R. E. Hall of McKim, Mead and White designed it with the local architect Roy A. Benjamin, in Mediterranean Revival style, seating 1,900. It went up in nine and a half months and was the largest picture house in the state when it opened, the first in the city with central air conditioning. The decoration borrowed from France, Spain and Italy, there were heavy chandeliers, a rooftop garden on the seventh floor and the second-largest Wurlitzer pipe organ anywhere. In August 1956 Elvis Presley played six sold-out shows here over two days while a juvenile court judge sat watching and threatened to arrest him if his movements were suggestive. Life magazine covered it, and people who were there say he stood flat-footed and sang the whole show. Television and the move to the suburbs emptied downtown, and the building closed on May 8, 1980. The Arts Assembly of Jacksonville bought it in 1981, raised about four million dollars and restored it, and it reopened in September 1983 as a nonprofit performing arts center. It is listed in the National Register of Historic Places and books national touring acts and local performers
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