The Aladdin Theater, 1924: Cocoa's Boom-era showplace

The Aladdin Theater opened on August 18, 1924, and according to its National Register nomination the Cocoa Tribune reported the biggest crowd ever to turn out for such an event in the town. Tickets cost 35 cents for adults and 20 cents for children. The building had cost $80,000 and seated 800 people, in a town of about 2,000. For the next twelve years it was the only theater in Cocoa.

Before the Aladdin

Cocoa had movies before 1924, but no real theater. The nomination names two earlier houses, the Cory (or Corey), which closed in 1913, and the Victor, which closed on July 14, 1924, after eleven years. Both were converted warehouses with a stage and benches. In 1923 C. Sweets Smith and Amos L. Wooten sold a lot on Brevard Avenue to Fred Bryan and H. M. Cogswell, who planned to build something better. Their theater was nearly finished when the Victor shut.

The building

The Aladdin was designed by P. Thornton Marye of the Atlanta firm Marye, Alger and Alger and built by W. H. Bower of Cocoa. It is a steel-framed masonry building, four stories tall, in the Italian Renaissance Revival style. The nomination describes the original front: red brick in a decorative pattern, a 27-foot copper marquee over a recessed entry with the ticket booth at its center, four white columns dividing five arched bays above, a row of six plaster medallions, and a pent roof of red barrel tile.

When it opened, Brevard Avenue was a dirt road and most of the buildings around it were wood-frame homes and shops of one or two stories. The nomination calls the Aladdin perhaps the most significant landmark the town built during the Florida land boom.

The theater years

The Aladdin was more than a cinema. A five-piece orchestra played for the silent films, and in March 1925 a $12,000 Morton pipe organ was installed. A touring company of the Broadway show My China Doll played there in February 1925, opera singers and road shows followed, and on January 5, 1928, Buddy Ebsen appeared with Vilma Ebsen as tap and eccentric dancers on a vaudeville bill.

The town used it as a hall. The Orange Festival king and queen were crowned there. On May 11, 1928, Ruth Bryan Owen, William Jennings Bryan’s daughter, spoke there while seeking the nomination for the 4th Congressional District seat, which she went on to win. On Christmas morning 1928 the theater hosted three hundred children from poor families for a free show, with fruit, candy and toys donated by local businesses and two packing houses.

The theater was segregated. In April 1930, the nomination records, a separate ticket booth and a stairway through the north room to the upper balcony were added for Black patrons.

Changing hands

The Depression wore the partnership down. In April 1936 Cogswell sued to dissolve it, and on September 16, 1936, the theater was sold to United Theater, Inc., the Sparks group. The nomination ends the Aladdin’s period of significance there, when it passed out of local control.

It changed hands among theater chains until the City of Cocoa bought it around 1976 and renamed it the Cocoa Village Playhouse. In July 1985 Brevard Community College bought the building from the city for one dollar and set up a nonprofit board to run it, and the college rehabilitated it with private gifts and state grants, replicating the original marquee and ticket booth. When it was nominated, it was used mainly for live performances. It was listed on the National Register on October 17, 1991.

Further Reading

• Florida: A Short History by Michael Gannon