FLORIDA PLACE TO EXPLORE
Quincy Music Theatre
Gadsden County · Panhandle & Emerald Coast
A 1949 cinema opened by Roy Rogers, saved in 1983 and now north Florida's community musical house.
ABOUT THIS PLACE
The Leaf Theater was built in Quincy in 1949 and named for the shade tobacco that made the town's money. Roy Rogers hosted the grand opening. It had air conditioning and a cry room for parents with babies, and, as was the practice then, separate segregated entrances. It worked as a movie house until 1980, when the multiplex cinemas took its trade and it closed. In 1983 Quincy Music Theatre bought the building and restored it, paid for with a preservation grant, local money and private gifts, some of them from the families of the townspeople who had bought Coca-Cola stock on their banker's advice two generations earlier. The building now stages live musicals, which is what the company does, along with film screenings through the summer and a children's summer workshop. Master classes are held there from time to time. For a town of this size, having a restored 1949 house running a full season of musicals is unusual, and it is one of the reasons people drive over from Tallahassee for an evening
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