Florida Theater

Florida Theatre, 1943.

Crowds line up to see Gone with the Wind at the Florida Theatre, 1947.

The Florida Theatre was a movie theater located at 186 North Palafox Street in downtown Pensacola.

The theater was opened by the Pryor circuit in the early 1940s. According to the trade publication Boxoffice:

As we pilot our Plymouth into Pensacola, getting into Saenger territory, again the theatre-building tocsin is ringing. It is definitely understood, and newspaper announcements have been made to the effect that the Pryor interests of Virginia, through Chester Hester, will shortly begin construction on The Florida, a house to seat 600, on the main thoroughfare, Palofax [sic], on a site now occupied by the Nobles Building. It is understood that tenants have been served notice to vacate. There is no pronounced boom in Pensacola, so to speak, but the town looks better than on the occasion of our last visit some half dozen years ago. The Pensacola Naval Air Station—the Annapolis of the Air—as it is called, is doing much to stimulate matters hereabouts, in which the motion picture business certainly will get its share.

Only a short while after it opened, the Florida was gutted by fire in 1944, causing $60,000 worth of damage to the Nobles Building. The owners held insurance on both equipment and occupancy, however, and were able to rebuild "a larger and better" theater with increased seating capacity. The Pensacola City Council passed an ordinance permitting more seats to be installed in a theater of its size, but then repealed it a few weeks later.

The theater was operated by Giddens & Rester since around 1960 under manager Francis Boucher. Boucher arranged extravagant promotions for many of the movies; for a 1965 showing of Shenandoah, actor Phillip Alford was brought to the city, taken by military escort to a television station for a live interview, and paraded through town with six convertibles full of Naval cadets and "Shenandoah Belles."

The theatre received new curtains and drapes in 1961 and was heavily refurbished in 1966 and 1971.

After its closure as a movie theater in (date needed), the Pensacola Little Theatre renovated the building and used it between 1977 and 1996. It was converted to retail space and most recently occupied by Milmo Fine Furnishings, but is vacant as of 2008.