Beach Theatre

Joe Vogel on September 22, 2021 at 10:58 pm

I believe this house was also known as the Cocoa Beach Theatre. I’ve found several references to it on various web sites, but so far none in theater industry trade journals. One comment on a Brevard County history page at Facebook says that the theater is now the Cocoa Beach Public Library, which is at 550 N. Brevard Avenue. The building is fairly large, and doesn’t look like a theater, so if the theater building was not demolished it must have been greatly expanded when or after being converted for library use. A history of the library says that the current facility opened in 1998. It doesn’t mention the theater.

A comment on another Facebook page notes that in the mid-1960s there were four indoor movie theaters in the Cocoa area: the State, the Barn, the Merritt Cinema, and the Palm. The commenter adds that the Cocoa Beach theater didn’t open until the late 1960s.

The house doesn’t appear to have lasted to long as a regular cinema. An August 4, 1988 Orlando Sentinel article about brew-and-view theaters in Florida says that “[i]n Brevard, perhaps one of the oldest of its kind can be found in Cocoa Beach, where the Cocoa Beach Theatre and Draft House presides off Brevard Avenue. The establishment has been open for nine years, the last two under the leadership of the Greenwell family.” The article noted that the house had a full-sized movie screen, unlike the small multiplex houses then opening up in the state.