Playhouse Theatre

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Pre-dating the Vinoy, the Don CeSar and the Million Dollar Pier, the Playhouse was a center of leisure and entertainment in St. Petersburg for nearly half a century before the stink of decay set in. Attempts to rehab and revitalize the place worked, with varying degrees of success, but by the turn of the century the writing was on the stained interior wall.

St. Petersburg Evening Independent, July 3, 1925. Courtesy the St. Petersburg Museum of History.

In today’s St. Pete, it is an anachronism. And it is nobody’s child.

Built “in the Spanish style” by 31-year-old New York amusement broker Anthony Shimko, the Patio Theater, as it was first known, opened Aug. 8, 1925. The Patio wasn’t St. Pete’s first movie house, but it was, according to the St. Petersburg Times, the “first to be erected outside of the congested district,” meaning downtown.