6/12/2023 0 Comments Miami little theatre![]() ![]() Now under the auspices of Miami Film Festival. įollowing another remodeling in 2002, the Theater was turned over to Miami Dade College. However, after almost sixty years of operation, MDC's Tower Theater was closed to the public in 1984. Soon MDC's Tower Theater altered its programming to include English-language films with Spanish subtitles, and eventually Spanish-language films. For many Cuban families, films at MDC's Tower Theater were an introduction to American culture in addition to pure entertainment. Eighth Street - "Calle Ocho" - became a place of new beginnings. The Theater was now a member of Wolfson-Meyer Theatrical Enterprises of Miami.ĭuring the late fifties and throughout the sixties, large numbers of Cuban refugees fled to Miami. The exterior was developed in an Art Deco style with a prominent 40-foot steel tower that quickly became a neighborhood landmark. On October 3, 1931, after extensive remodeling under the leadership of Robert Law Weed, the theatre re-opened its doors. Robdendon Corporation opened this movie theatre to the public as a Wometco first-run-house in December 1926. It is located on SW Eighth Street and Fifteenth Avenue in Miami, Florida. ![]() When it opened in December 1926, it was the finest state-of-the-art theater in the South. MDC's Tower Theater, is one of Miami's oldest cultural landmarks. In the next installment of this column we will bring the fascinating story of the Tower Theater to the present.Premier of " Calzada" at the Tower Theatre in Miami It was said that Weed’s designs here had resulted in the first art deco façade applied to a theater in Miami. ![]() The architect who designed and administered these alterations was Robert Law Weed, who was in the early stages of a formidable career that would bridge the era of World War II. In 1931, the rising Wolfson-Meyer Theatrical Enterprise of Miami (Wometco) theater chain purchased the Tower Theater and modified its exterior, adding a 40-foot structural tower with neon lighting visible from blocks away (an RKO-like tower), a rounded contour and glass brick, the last two items reflective of the emerging Streamline Moderne/Art Deco style. A Lloyd Hamilton comedy and novelty reels will be featured. Jack Holt and Noah Berry in Zane Grey’s, “The Light of Western Stars” is the picture for Saturday at 3, 7, and 9 pm. Argentino has been engaged to sing each night for one week as an added attraction. Stanley Spoehr, manager of the Tower, announced that Mr. …At the end of the 7 o’clock showing, the audience was given a treat in the appearance of Giuseppe Argentino, noted tenor, who sang two numbers. The Miami Herald wrote of the theater’s inaugural presentation as well as an upcoming entertainment and screening: One of the latest type pipe organ has been installed and later it is contemplated (sic) singers will supplement the program…Īrtic Nu-Air ventilating system has been installed, insuring complete circulation of cool air at all times. The interior has been done in a semi-Spanish style of architecture, with indirect lighting effect. The seating capacity is approximately 1,000. The theater was completed recently and is one of the most attractive in Miami. Donnley, vice-president of the Rodendon Corp., owners and operators of a group of moving picture houses in north and south, a prologue of bathing beauties will take the stage before the picture begins. Miami’s newest movie (theater) will open Thursday at 7 pm, when the Tower Theater, SW 8 th St and 15 th Ave, (will) inaugurate its first performance with a showing of Bebe Daniels in “The Palm Beach Girl.”Īccording to J.A. ![]() This is how the Miami Daily News and Metropolis, the city’s first newspaper, explained the opening program and other elements of the new “movie palace”: Its interior, which also contained elements of the Spanish Mediterranean motif, was the handiwork of Herman Hasse. Lawrence, the Tower Theater contained elements of the era’s dominant Mediterranean style. Anchoring the new retail presence was the Tower Theater, whose initial offerings were silent movies, or least movies without dialogue or even monologue.ĭesigned by Henry J. Behind or south of this physical plant was the rising Shenandoah neighborhood. 8 th Street, retail housing stock, from 15 th to 16 th Avenues, where there had been nothing before. Suddenly there arose on the south side of what was now a paved S.W. The real estate boom of the mid-1920s brought radical changes to this picture. And its most enduring element, the magnificent Tower Theater, whose origins reach back to 1926, is a major part of that achievement.īefore there was a Tower Theater there was a dirt road, known till 1920 as 20 th Street, representing the right-of-way of today’s S.W. That Calle Ocho is enjoying an unparalleled renaissance-with much more to come-is a given. ![]()
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