Florida Twin Theatre

Joe Vogel on November 24, 2013 at 8:56 am

The July 3, 1941, issue of The Film Daily ran this item about the Florida Theatre:

“Stageburg [sic] Completes Plans

“Starke, Fla.— 0. C. R. Stageburg, of Gainsville, has completed plans for the new Florida Theater, being built for the Manassa family, owners and operators of several Florida houses. Building contract has been awarded R. H. Mathe & Son.”

Stageburg is probably not the correct spelling of the architect’s name. A 1939 issue of the FAA Bulletin (Florida Association of Architects) spells it Stageberg, and as he was an officer of the organization they probably spelled it right.

Another theater was planned for Starke in 1940, but I’ve been unable to discover if it was built or not. Noted in the October 11, 1940, issue of The Film Daily, it was to be a 1000-seat house designed by Roy Benjamin for the Sparks chain, and would have been built at Call and Court Streets. Court Street is not on the map, but Google Maps puts a pin icon for it anyway, down the block west of the Florida’s site. Court Street appears to have been absorbed into a parking lot since then.

50sSNIPES on March 20, 2025 at 8:39 am

The Florida Theatre opened its doors on October 4, 1941 with Betty Grable in “A Yank In The R.A.F” and Claude Pepper in “International Affairs” along with an unnamed Pete Smith Specialty and an unnamed cartoon. It originally housed 700 seats as a single-screener, with 500 seats in the auditorium and 200 seats in the balcony, and its original projection featured Simplex projection with Cyclex lamps and Simplex sound.

Unlike most small town movie theaters in Florida, the Florida Theatre has its own water supply with a wall measuring 80ft and when the air conditioning was used at capacity, the system will consume 40 gallons of water a minute, which was “enough to supply half of the town’s population”. The system had a capacity of 35 tons of ice and temperature in the theater was controllable. The original auditorium featured deeply-cushioned seats with a wine color, harmonizing with both tan and green schemes for the interior.

The Florida Theatre was remodeled in 1972 and again on June 14, 1984 when it reopened as a twin theater. The twinning downsized the capacity to 310 seats, with 104 seats in Screen 1 and 206 seats in Screen 2, as well as an updated projection room and concession stand. The work of its 1984 remodeling which took two months between April 26 and June 13 of that year was done only on days the theater is closed or in the daytime when there’s no shows, but the work was halted whenever a show starts in the evenings, meaning that the theater was still operating during construction of its second screen at the time.