By Lorrie DeFrank Photos by Lily Snowden
it’s showtime again at the Florida Theatre and competing for top billing is the building itself. Restored to its original magnificence, it’s set for a 50-year encore—at the very least.
In preparation for the historic landmark’s 100th anniversary in 2027, a major—but not final—phase of the renovation was completed while it was closed from July to October this year. Patrons attending The Rocky Horror Picture Show on October 28 were the first theatergoers to see the transformation. But there was nothing spooky about the freshness, beauty, and comfort.
Closed, yes. Deserted, hardly. Crammed from floor to very high ceiling with scaffolding, the theater at Forsyth and Newnan streets in downtown Jacksonville was bustling with tradespeople performing their magic on decades of significant deterioration. Some contorted themselves into impossibly tight spaces to fix, replace, clean, and paint. As many as a dozen artists—painters, plasterers, and conservators—from one renowned studio alone were there at any given time removing peeling decorative plaster and replacing layers of old paint with new. Meanwhile, the heavy work that theatergoers won’t see but likely is the most important change of all went on around them as contractors replaced the entire HVAC system and moved the massive electrical vault from the first to the third floor.
