The Florida Theatre and its first marquee, as it appeared in 1927 when the theater opened. | The Florida Theatre
Published on July 29, 2025 at 3:33 pm
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The iconic marquee outside the 98-year-old Florida Theatre needs a facelift to restore the look it had when last rebuilt about 75 years ago, theater officials say.
As part of continuing renovations to the venue on East Forsyth Street in recent years, theater officials are seeking proposals to renovate the marquee, its neon and flashing lights and its video signs. The work will be done in 2027 or 2028.
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The marquee that ticket holders see at Downtown Jacksonville’s remaining classic movie palace is not the original that hung over its lobby doors when the Florida Theatre first opened in 1927, President Numa Saisselin said. What you see now replaced the original in 1950, when the popular movie theater showed hits like All About Eve, Sunset Boulevard and Annie Get Your Gun.
The iconic marquee that everybody knows “really needs work,” Saisselin said. It has rusted light sockets, weather-faded panels over the fluorescent lights and information screens that have glitches.
“It’s structurally sound,” Saisselin said. “We do have an engineering study from about five years ago that shows it’s not going to fall off the building. But it’s got a lot of rust on it, and the signboards are due to be replaced. There’s a whole secondary marquee under the existing canopy that hasn’t been seen in years that we would like to bring back as well.”
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The Florida Theatre opened in April 1927 on the site of Jacksonville’s police station. It was one of six theaters on Forsyth Street at the time.
By the 1980s, it had become chiefly a movie house when the Arts Assembly of Jacksonville bought it for $1 million from Plitt Southern Theatres using a mix of state and city funding. The theater was officially accepted onto the National Register of Historic Places at that time.
Renovations in the last five years total $17.1 million. They included new theater seating, plus upgraded lighting and sound systems. The theater also opened its Remedy Lounge and VIP room, which is on the second floor lobby and includes a period photo of the original theater.
The most recent $8 million renovation brought new paint matching the 1927 original done inside the theater, plus lobby and other public spaces. The bathrooms were renovated and enlarged, while the Spanish-style architecture was restored. An upgraded air conditioning system was added to preserve all those changes, Saisselin said.
Now the theater is gearing up for more work this summer and fall that will total just over $2 million. The work will represent the next chapter in years of renovations that will probably total $25 million by the time it’s all done, Saisselin said.
“There is about $15 million left to do on the buildings,” Saisselin said. “About $2.1 million of that is happening this summer and fall, when we are taking down the old chimney that we don’t need anymore because we have a new air conditioning system. That chimney sits on the back wall of the stage and takes up 35 square feet of stage space, which is a lot of real estate in a theater of this size.”
The chimney was connected to a boiler removed when the air conditioning went in, he said. The theater also will build a new artist green room off-stage in the old boiler room and a new dressing room in an abandoned mechanical room above it. These projects should be done by late winter or early spring of 2026.
Theater officials also would like to build a new artist hospitality suite, upgrade administrative offices and do a first-floor lobby restoration, part of an estimated $12 million in future projects. But the marquee renovation will be next after the chimney removal, Saisselin said.
The nonprofit Florida Theatre Performing Arts Center Inc. is seeking proposals from contractors to restore the marquee, which could take two to three years to complete, theater officials said.
Theater officials are in discussion with the city on a new round of capital funding for the renovations and will “match whatever the city brings to the table dollar for dollar,” Saisselin said. He added that supporters privately raised 55% of the recent $17.1 million in renovations.
For more information about the theater’s history and future shows, go to floridatheatre.com.
