Beach Theatre
420 Lincoln Road,
Miami Beach,
FL
33139
420 Lincoln Road,
Miami Beach,
FL
33139
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The Beach theatre opened on December 25th, 1940 with “Love Thy Neighbor”. Grand opening ad posted.
http://carta.fiu.edu/mbus/wp-content/uploads/sites/14/2016/05/420-LIncoln-Road-History-compressed.pdf
Thank you. What a shame.
it has been partitioned away from the theatre, and a large cement wall now covers the original hallway between the lobby and theatre. the large stairwell pictured above no longer exists and getting to the mezzanine from the bottom floor is now impossible. The actually theatre has been closed off on all sides. Every door sealed from the outside with concrete and drywall on the inside. There is now only one small door to get into the theatre area. if you look closely in the photo above. you can see the old bay doors on the far wall are covered with large cement blocks.
What about the lobby?
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4ZyPrk-_ZRzWVZnUmZJR0FuQ00/view?usp=sharing
Have walked through the Lincoln rd Beach Theatre. It is completely gutted. nothing is left.
Percival Pereira was not connected with the design of this theater. The principals of the firm of Pereira & Pereira were William Pereira and Hal Pereira.
The architect and firm fields for this page don’t match up with most other sources. The caption pages for the Gottscho-Schleisner photos of the Beach Theatre at the Library of Congress (see my previous comment) say that Pereira & Pereira acted as design consultants on the project, but the architects were Weed & Reeder. There’s no mention of Albert Anis.
The Pacific Coast Architecture Database page for Hal (not Percival) Pereira lists him as a consultant to Weed & Reeder on the Beach Theatre project, and cites an article from The Architectural Record, August, 1941, as the source. It is possible that William Pereira was not involved in the project. Although the firm of Pereira & Pereira was not formally dissolved until 1943 (according to the AIA’s Directory of American Architects), William appears to have been very busy in Los Angeles in the early 1940s.
The entry for architect Frank H. Shuflin in the 1956 edition of the AIA’s Directory of American Architects lists the Beach Theatre in Miami Beach as one of his principal works. It lists Shuflin’s positions at the firm of Weed & Reeder as draftsman from 1927 to 1934, and Associate in charge of the office from 1935 to 1941. I’m not sure if that means he was the lead architect on the Beach Theatre or not.
A questionnaire sent to the AIA from architect Edwin T. Reeder in 1946 also lists the Beach Theatre as one of his works. Reeder left the partnership with Robert Law Reed in 1941 and established his own practice, so the Beach must have been one of their last projects together.
Just passed through Lincoln Road and I can confirm that there is no Tao, but I also didn’t recall seeing any evidence of the Beach theater either. I’m going to try to swing by there again tomorrow to check it out. What a shame as this appears to have been a stunning theater very “Miami” in design. Has the Auditorium been gutted or is it still there? Do anyone know?
Update: The word I’m getting is that the TAO project is dead, so only heaven knows what will become of the Beach Theatre location now.
…[sigh]…June 2009, and still no TAO opening…
Louis, sorry for the delay in responding. No, TAO hasn’t opened yet. There were some delays with City boards, but I think that’s all resolved now and they should be opening soon.
Also, the link to the original article has moved to here…TAO Miami Beach
Al, I have always thought that the most impressive theatres in Miami, were The Miami, The Carib, The Paramount, and The Beach. As far as originallity goes, I haven’t seen any theatres more grand than those, they were quite unique.
Tao in New York is the old Plaza Theatre on 58th street. They gutted the place out for the restaurant but the food is quite good.
The link to photos posted by Joe Vogel reminded me of how beautiful the Beach lobby was.
MiamiGuy,
Has Tao opened yet? I have been to Tao in Vegas several times. It certainly is a place to see, I am curious to see if the “South Beach” version is just as cool.
Hot off the press: Beach Theatre is becoming a TAO Restaurant & Lounge…story here…Miami Beach
The Library of Congress web site has 18 photos of the Beach theater from about the time of its opening. Use the theater and city name in the search box on this page.
This was a Florida State Theatre at one time and a Brandt house during it’s later years. It mostly ran roadshow, twice a day, exclusive runs such as HELLO, DOLLY! for long runs.
nothing remains externally of the marquee, heres a recent pic taken from the same spot as the main pic above
View link
Yeah, I passed by that theatre one time about two weeks ago (that was actually Christmas Eve). On the way home from visiting our Grandma, we saw the huge marquee, and on the side it said “Finding Polar Treasure”, which brought on a nice little laugh. Anyway, I’ve never been inside this theatre, but I’ve seen it a good number of times, complete with the old “Cineplex Odeon” logo intact.
This theatre booked mostly Warner Bros. films throughout the 1950s including A STAR IS BORN, LUCKY ME (World Premiere), THE PAJAMA GAME, DAMN YANKEES, SPIRIT OF ST. LOUIS.
After this beautiful theatre closed they converted it into a bank. It looks as if the bank took all of the lobby area space. I think something else may occupy the actual theatre portion, but I can’t say for sure.
The Beach Theatre seated 1800 people.