![\"An](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/tos-l-beacham.jpg\")
An elephant made a splash in 1930 outside the Beacham, Orlando’s premier downtown movie theater for decades. (Courtesy Orange County Regional History Center)<\/p>\nDowntown Orlando\u2019s Beacham Theatre has been around for more than 100 years \u2013 and it\u2019s seen a lot of changes over that time.<\/p>\n
The theater was built in 1921 by former Orlando mayor Braxton Beacham, a citrus baron, on the site of the old county jail. It was popular among visitors of the nearby San Juan and Angebilt hotels; both were connected to the theater by tunnels.<\/p>\n
The Beacham initially hosted vaudeville shows and movies. The films ended in 1975 and the theater then operated as the Great Southern Music Hall, Laser World, a Las Vegas-style cabaret and a dinner theater. It was also was Tabu Nighclub and Dekko\u2019s.<\/p>\n
Now again called The Beacham, the venue is open as a nightclub, hosting concerts and live events.<\/p>\n
Throughout its history, the Beacham hosted a variety of musical acts: including the composer John Philip Sousa, The Killers, The Police, Lauryn Hill, hip hop artists J. Cole, Meek Mill, DJ Khaled and electronic dance music DJs Benny Benassi, Tiesto, Afrojack and David Guetta.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
There\u2019s disagreement whether The Beacham was Orlando\u2019s first theater. Files prepared for the city\u2019s Historic Preservation Board say it was, but local historian Joy Wallace Dickinson said others were first, but none as big.<\/p>\n
An elephant made a splash in 1930 outside the Beacham, Orlando’s premier downtown movie theater for decades. (Courtesy Orange County Regional History Center)<\/p>\n
\u201cThere were other theaters downtown, but The Beacham got the big new movies,\u201d said Dickinson, who wrote a history column for the Orlando Sentinel. \u201cIt\u2019s where you went on dates to see the new movies.\u201d<\/p>\n
More stories and features from the Orlando Sentinel\u2019s 150 years of covering Central Florida can be found at OrlandoSentinel.com\/150<\/a>. Buy a copy of the Orlando Sentinel\u2019s 150th anniversary book with 150 front pages from our 150 years.\u00a0Get it OrlandoSentinel.com\/150yearsbook<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Downtown Orlando\u2019s Beacham Theatre has been around for more than 100 years \u2013 and it\u2019s seen a lot…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":350939,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[53370,114,266,115,139,141,140,53371,109],"class_list":["post-350938","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-orlando","tag-flashbacks","tag-latest-headlines","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-orlando","tag-orlando-headlines","tag-orlando-news","tag-orlando-sentinel-150","tag-social"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350938","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=350938"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350938\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/350939"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=350938"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=350938"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=350938"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}