San Carlos Theatre
516 Duval Street,
Key West,
FL
33040
516 Duval Street,
Key West,
FL
33040
1 person
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The San Carlos Theatre was opened in 1924.
Contributed by
Bryan Krefft
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Recent comments (view all 14 comments)
A photo can be seen on the San Carlos Institute website.
I’ve found this theater referred to as the Palace in Boxoffice as far back as 1937, but never more recently than 1951. The July 11, 1953, issue of Boxoffice ran an article about the Palace being renamed the San Carlos Theatre when a major remodeling and expansion of the house had recently taken place. The theater was operated by Miami showman Milton Frackman and his local partners, A.W. Castro and Gerald Abreu.
Among other changes to the theater, a small shelf balcony had been enlarged into a full balcony, increasing the theater’s total seating capacity from a little over 600 to 825. The article did not give a name for an architect of the remodeling, but the decoration was by Eugene Vitanza, of Miami. An interesting sidelight mentioned int he article is that Ernest Hemingway occasionally attended this theater when he lived in Key West.
The last of the partners who had operated the San Carlos since the early 1950s, Gerald Abreu, gave over the operation to Marshall & Rode Theatres of Cherry Hill, New Jersey, in 1968, according to Boxoffice of April 15 that year. That’s the last mention of the San Carlos I’ve found in Boxoffice, and I’ve been unable to find the house mentioned under its later name of Cinema II at all.
This site has an ad and a photo from around 1964.
Their website gives the current seating as “Our charming historical theater accomodates an audience of 360 persons”. Looks like they expanded and then contracted. :)
For a while it operated solely as a movie theater, but now it has embraced all its former functions for the community. So the theater has apparently lost some space.
It was closed (and supposedly boarded up) the whole time I was in Key West, but I distinctly remember walking past and the front door ajar. Can’t recall if I poked my head inside or not. I remember being curious about the place, but the people hanging around were less than reputable. Key West was like that…
Thanks for that link to the Movies Made in Key West site. I also remember Capt Tony giving out posters for “Key West Crossing” in his bar. This would have been late 78, early 79. I looked for it, but never saw the movie come out.
I misstated the original seating capacity of the Palace in my comment above. That line in paragraph 2 should read “…increasing the theater’s total seating capacity from a little under 600 to 825.” The article said that “about 250” seats had been added in the remodeling. The figure currently at the top of this page (571) was probably accurate for the Palace. I’m guessing Bryan found the theater in the listings in an FDY published before the 1952 remodel and renaming.
The seat count probably came from an early 1950s FDY. In 1945 the Palace is listed with 300 seats. Still listed as the Palace in 1950 with 571 seats. This theater should be listed as the San Carlos with Palace and Cinema II as aka names. I don’t know who the original architect was but this theater was restored in the early 1990s and the architects for the restoration were Jorge and Margarita Khuly according to the San Carlos website.
The original architect is named in my first post.
Here is a photo of the San Carlos when it was the Palace Theatre and sported a very slick Art Moderne marquee.
Here is a later photo (probably 1961) with the San Carlos marquee on the building.
There was another San Carlos theater in Key West before this one, owned and operated by James Harold “Harry” Burgert, one of the Burgert brothers family of photographers. Maybe it operated in a different building. It was in operation from as early as 1911 to 1912 and featured moving pictures and vaudeville acts. See about halfway down this web page, in the section about Harry Burgert. http://www.tampapix.com/BB3.htm. There are ads there for this theater, but they don’t give the address.