State Art Theatre
313 S. Andrews Avenue,
Fort Lauderdale,
FL
33301
313 S. Andrews Avenue,
Fort Lauderdale,
FL
33301
1 person
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Additional Info
Previously operated by: Florida State Theaters Inc., Paramount Pictures Inc.
Previous Names: Sunset Theatre, State Theatre
Nearby Theaters
Standing next to the Sweet Building (today known as One River Plaza) on S. Andrews Avenue at Las Olas Boulevard, the 989-seat Sunset Theatre was opened December 24, 1923. By 1941 it was operated by E.J. Sparks, a subsidiary of Paramount Pictures Inc. It was closed in 1953. It was reopened as the State Theatre in late-March 1957 and from June 1960 it was renamed State Art Theatre. It was closed in the early-1970’s.
It has since been demolished and a parking garage now stands on the site.
Contributed by
Bryan Krefft
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Recent comments (view all 9 comments)
The Sunset was opened on Christmas Eve 1922 at South Andrews and Las Olas next to the “Sweet Building”. This would be Fort Lauderdale’s first theater. It initially seated 989 patrons. It closed in 1950. Florida States Theaters owned this theater.
The Sunset used to show bawdy movies and later, it turned into the short lived Purple Onion night club where Little Richard actually performed.
Correction: Theater closed in 1953.
Judging from Google Maps, the building next to it in the 40’s postcard is still there, but the theater is now a parking garage
From the 1940s a view of Andrews Avenue along withe the Sunset Theatre on a postcard and a photo postcard in Fort Lauderdale.
The map given above is south of the Sunset’s former location; it was just a block or two south of Las Olas Boulevard, around the corner from where the Las Olas Riverfront 15 shows movies today.
The above ‘Sunset Theater’ in Ft Lauderdale was later reopened as ‘The STATE Theater’ sometime during the 1950-1960’s. As a kid in those years, I used to frequent this theater on a weekly basis. They became famous for showing mostly B-films of the Sci-Fi/Horror genre and teen flicks (along with other standard fare features of the times). I can seem to find absolutely NO information regarding this theater when it became “The STATE”. Would love to see any old photos which featured the marquee sign showing that change. I believe that I finally closed forever in the early 1970’s.
1939 photo added credit Sun Sentinel Archives.
I believe we have the wrong opening year for the Sunset Theatre. It was 1923, not 1922. The November 23, 1923 issue of Moving Picture World said that the Sunset was one of the houses to which W. C. Burgert, of the Tampa Photo & Art Supply Company, of Tampa, Florida, had sold complete equipment, including projectors and Heywood-Wakefield chairs, over the previous two months. An announcement that the as yet unnamed house was under construction and expected to open in December had appeared in the November 3, 1923 issue of the same journal. The auditorium of the new house boasted a stage 33x22 feet, with dressing rooms and some scenery provided.
I finally found some ads in the Ft. Lauderdale News of this site as the STATE Theatre from late March 1957 to June 1960. It ran exploitation films and then gradually moved to “ART” films as the STATE ART. That trajectory is the opposite of how it went for most theatres in that era.