A juvenile court judge sat in the audience with arrest warrants drafted, watching Elvis Presley's hips for anything too suggestive - the six sold-out shows of August 1956 remain the most famous nights this room has seen. The Florida Theatre at 128 East Forsyth Street in downtown Jacksonville opened on 8 April 1927, a Mediterranean Revival movie palace built on the site of an old police station and hailed by the next morning's paper as "a palace of dreams." Designed by R. E. Hall and Company with local architect Roy A. Benjamin, the 1,865-seat house mixed French, Italian and Moorish fantasy with then-novel central air conditioning - Jacksonville's first theatre to have it. It is the last remaining movie palace in northeast Florida, listed on the National Register in 1982 and named among the AIA Florida chapter's hundred places of the century. The Elvis stand - Judge Marion Gooding's warning meeting with the 21-year-old singer made LIFE magazine - crowned a performance history that ranges from vaudeville to Fleetwood Mac, Lynyrd Skynyrd and an 11-year-old Derek Trucks sitting in with the Allman Brothers Band in 1991. The theatre closed in 1980, was bought by the Arts Assembly of Jacksonville in 1981 for a million dollars, and reopened in 1983 after a five-million-dollar restoration. Run since by a non-profit in partnership with the city, which owns the building, the Florida Theatre is now one of the most attended theatres in America - consistently top-five in its size class in Pollstar and VenuesNow rankings, hosting around 200 events a year across touring music, comedy, classic films and community programming. An eight-million-dollar project completed in 2023 returned the auditorium to its original 1927 colour palette. Downtown logistics are simple: garages and lots surround the Forsyth Street block, the riverfront and Main Street bars are walkable, and the intimate scale means even rear-balcony seats stay close. For Jacksonville the building is more than a venue - it is the room where the city's entertainment history keeps happening.

Type: Theater / Concert Hall

Address: 128 East Forsyth Street, Jacksonville, FL, United States, 32202

Website: https://www.floridatheatre.com

Cover Charge: 1

Capacity: 1865

Opening Date: 08/04/1927

Serves Food

Accessible