FLORIDA PLACE TO EXPLORE
The Lyric Theatre
Martin County · Atlantic Coast
A 1926 theater at 59 Southwest Flagler Avenue in downtown Stuart, now a working music and stage venue.
ABOUT THIS PLACE
John Sherwood and Mark Casto designed it in concrete, mixing Beaux Arts with Mission and Spanish Revival, and it opened with nine hundred seats for silent pictures and live shows. Sound equipment went in during the early 1930s. Katharine Hepburn appeared on this stage in a Kiwanis minstrel show in 1941. Like every downtown movie house it lost its audience to the mall cinemas in the 1950s and 1960s and passed through other uses, including a church. In 1987 the New Life in Christ Church put it up for sale, and a local realtor named Roy Laycock put together a board and a fundraising campaign to buy it as an anchor for the town center. Major renovation followed in 1993 with two grants, an elevator in 2001, a larger stage in 2004 and new orchestra seating in 2014. It went on the National Register on November 12, 1993, and is run by Friends of the Lyric. The box office number is 772-286-7827
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