Tampa Theatre

the lobby

The Tampa Theatre is downtown on North Franklin Street; going there is a like going to the movies a really long time ago. So easy to expect Queen Victoria is going to sweep in and enjoy the show. It’s a protected heritage theatre built in 1926, when architect John Eberson said, “I was impressed with the colorful scenes that greeted me at Miami, Palm Beach and Tampa. Visions of Italian gardens, Spanish patios, Persian shrines and French formal gardens flashed through my mind, and at once I directed my energies to carrying out these ideas.”

He stuffed them all in. He called this design style atmospheric.

one of the water fountains

The lobby has rooflines, columns, and birds to suggest a courtyard. Its floor is original to 1926. All the add-ons here and in the entire theatre – columns, cherubs, flowers, birds, architectural follies – are plaster.

near ceiiing of lobby; note roof tiles

Inside the theatre the ceiling is so high. It’s painted in the most beautiful shade of Noxema blue. The colour was formulated by Eberson and recalls Kline Blue or the blue chalk used with plumb bobs, with 99 tiny stars pricked into it with little lights, a few of which twinkle.

Eberson from a Motion Picture News article:

Did you ever notice the particular blue we are now using in our atmospheric theatres? It releases the nerve tension of the audience; refreshes the eye, makes one feel that one can breathe, and it has one hundred and one beneficial effects on the mind and nerves.

Blue is always described as the color of Hope. This is not a fanciful and trivial sentiment, but a fact which can be scientifically proved, but it must be a certain, defined and distinct blue on a certain, defined and distinct textured surface.

It’s like being outside. There is a projection of faint wispy clouds that comes from a painted disc and light on the stage-right rampart. The walls recall a romantic Mediterranean pleasure palace, replete with old-world statuary, niches and gargoyles. It is so other-worldy. Scooched down in a comfy seat you are certain never to be found. Since you’re obviously time-travelling, even if they know to track you to Tampa, they’ll never find the time portal.

It’s much bigger than it looks. Seat yourself at the organ and see.

Standard movies play here, and musicians and magicians. Sunday matinées are special films of one kind or another. Blade Runner or All About Eve.

one of the many niche statues

The volunteers and staff of the theatre offer a daytime backstage tour. On a recent Tuesday about twelve people are led up stairs and down for two hours. The highlight of the tour is meeting three old fellows who make a subject I have no interest in into something fascinating. Fifteen minutes before every movie a magnificent three-manual, 14-rank Wurlitzer organ rises from under the stage and a member of The Central Florida Theatre Organ Society plays some tunes. Bob Russ does the honours for the tour. Gene Bowers gives a talk and Bob Courtney is deferred to for tough questions. I had seen these three hanging out at the start of the tour 90 minutes earlier.

Bob Russ at the mighty Wurlitzer

I had no idea: a theatre organ is a different beast than a church organ. They were made to accompany silent movies. Many were made. Few survive. They have pipes a church organ does not. They can do sound effects like a sirens, doorbells, and car horns. They can play an actual trumpet, marimba, xylophone, or one of many instruments. Those instruments are up behind the scenes, with the pipes, in chambers on either side of the proscenium’s arch. There’s an electrical wire running between the organ key and a piano hammer (in the case of a percussion pipe) or pneumatic contrivance; this sounds the instrument.

All three are very excited about Dr. Steven Ball coming to Tampa from Atlantic City to play with the silent movie Wings. They call him Dr. Steven Ball every time they refer to him – he’s the theatre organ guru in the U.S.

the light board (a digital update is in the works)

There is a Google Street tour inside the theatre. You can waltz right in, have a close look at the walls, go right up on on stage and set your tired self down at that mighty Wurlitzer.