The Vero Theatre — Vero Beach, Florida

The Vero Theatre is the 1924 Mediterranean Revival movie house on 14th Avenue in downtown Vero Beach, known for most of its working life as the Florida Theatre and since 1991 as Theatre Plaza. The Florida Division of Historical Resources survey of historic places describes it as the first motion picture theater in town and one of the few remaining structures of the original downtown, a two-story building with a flat roof, parapets and walls finished in stucco, designed by the architect F.H. Trimble.

Its significance in Vero Beach goes beyond film. The National Park Service NPGallery record for the Vero Theatre lists commerce, entertainment and recreation, and architecture as areas of significance, with 1924 and 1937 as significant years, and the listing was published on April 28, 1992. Local accounts also connect the theatre to the 1925 split that created Indian River County. The building has not shown films since 1985; parts now hold shops and offices.

According to Cinema Treasures, the house opened as the 800-seat Vero Theatre on October 20, 1924, with Lon Chaney in The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Vero was still a small town in St. Lucie County, five years past its 1919 incorporation. The building went up during the Florida land boom along the same 14th Avenue blocks where the Pueblo Arcade would follow in 1926.

The builder was a Vero contractor recognized by the state. The Great Floridians 2000 program records that James Hudson Baker, born in 1866, moved to Vero Beach in 1912 and became a building contractor who built many commercial and residential buildings in the city, including the Vero Theatre Building and the Farmers Bank Building. Baker died in 1951, and his Great Floridian plaque was placed at the Vero Theatre Building on 14th Avenue. The design itself is credited to F.H. Trimble, an Orlando architect whom the state survey also names as designer of the Fellsmere Public School.

The official outline is on the City of Vero Beach historic preservation history page: in 1925 a number of Vero's most prominent citizens lobbied in Tallahassee for a new county they named Indian River, Vero became the county seat, and the city was re-incorporated and renamed Vero Beach. Before that, Vero sat in St. Lucie County, and the new county was carved from that territory with Vero at its center.

The theatre enters the story through Sunday movies. A 2021 Vero News report on a Main Street Vero Beach history tour relates that Vero, then part of St. Lucie County, had long been at odds with the county seat, and that the last straw came when St. Lucie police showed up to enforce county blue laws forbidding the showing of movies on Sunday at the Vero theatre; in 1925 Indian River County was established and Vero's name was changed to Vero Beach. The account comes from a local history presentation rather than a court record, but it is the reason the 14th Avenue theatre is cited in Vero Beach as a birthplace of the county.

Cinema Treasures records that the house reopened after a remodel as the Florida Theatre on November 13, 1936, a date that lines up with the 1937 significant year on the National Register record. The Florida name stuck; the state survey lists the Vero Beach building as the Florida Theater. Chain operators followed: the Talgar Theatre Company ran it by 1953, and Kent Theatres by 1968.

The film era ended in the mid-1980s. The Florida Theatre closed as a movie house on June 18, 1985, with Desperately Seeking Susan, and the 14th Avenue building became a furniture store. On October 26, 1991, it reopened as Theatre Plaza, a live performance and event center, and the following year it joined the National Register. The City of Vero Beach National Register page still lists the Vero Theatre among the thirteen city properties whose nominations the Historic Preservation Commission reviews.

The theatre anchors the middle of 14th Avenue, the street that Main Street Vero Beach treats as its main street. The organization's guide splits the avenue into blocks: the Pocahontas Quadrant at the northern end between 23rd Street and 21st Street, with Pocahontas Park and the Heritage Center; the Theater Plaza Quadrant between 21st Street and 20th Street; the Seminole Courtyard Quadrant between 20th Street and 19th Place; and the Towne Plaza Quadrant between 19th Place and 19th Street. The Vero Theatre gives its name to the second of those blocks.

Several of the theatre's neighbors share its land boom origins. The state historic places survey describes the Pueblo Arcade, two stories of masonry built in 1926 by the local contractors Blackford and Davis, as part of the rapid rebuilding of the Vero commercial center after the fire of 1919. The Old Vero Beach Community Center, built in 1935 farther north on the same avenue, served as a social gathering place, playhouse and meeting hall. Main Street Vero Beach, which the Guardian identified in 2013 as a nonprofit affiliated with the Florida Main Street program of the State Division of Historical Resources, has used the Vero Theatre building as a base while promoting this downtown.

The auditorium has been dark for decades. Cinema Treasures reports that by 2023 the building had been gutted and was used for storage, while other parts of the building held retail and office space; it lists 312 seats in the current configuration and functions of office space, retail and storage. In October 2013 the Indian River Guardian described a Main Street Vero Beach haunted house production inside as the first time since 1985 that the Historic Florida Theatre had opened its doors to the public.

Main Street Vero Beach has long worked from the building. In 2013 its office sat in a suite under the historic Florida Theatre marquee, and in 2021 the organization's board president described the office as being in another historic building, the Theatre Plaza. Main Street's own downtown guide names the central block of 14th Avenue between 21st Street and 20th Street the Theater Plaza Quadrant. For the 2019 city centennial the Vero Beach Wine and Film Festival scheduled a screening of a documentary titled Vero's Historic Theatre, according to the Guardian.