Did you see the designs for the new Dr. P. Phillips Orlando Performing Arts Center?
This could be the biggest deal to hit downtown since Buffalo Bill's buffalo, Barney, ran amok on Orange Avenue in 1912. No joke: That was a very, very big deal at the time -- and, no, I wasn't there. What a kidder you are.
But that event, which culminated in Barney's demise, was sad, while this performing-arts center inspires happy thoughts and optimism, not only about a first-class home for the arts but also about the prospect of a downtown renaissance.
And it's fun that the site across from City Hall is close to the earliest homes for entertainment in Orlando. In fact, the new center will be the second structure to bear Dr. Phillips' name on Orange Avenue.
In 1916, the orange-juice king, who lived in a big Queen Anne house that remains on Lake Lucerne, announced plans for a deluxe theater at the northeast corner of Orange Avenue and Pine Street -- the same intersection where a well provided the water for Orlando's firefighting operation at the time.
When Dr. Phillips' theater debuted in 1917, the opening picture was Wild and Woolly starring Douglas Fairbanks.
Doc Phillips leased the operation to prominent businessman Braxton Beacham, who would soon build what would become downtown's premier movie house, the Beacham. Both the Phillips and Beacham theater buildings still exist, although transformed. (The Beacham houses Tabu nightclub.)
Kerosene-lit palace
Even closer to the site of the new performing-arts center and earlier than these movie theaters, the Orlando Opera House served as the city's first grand venue.
Built of wood in 1884 on Court Street between Pine and Church streets, it faced Court Street; the stage door opened on Main (now Magnolia).
A New Year's Eve party in 1887 at the Opera House drew all "the society people of South Florida," according to memories published in the Orlando Reporter-Star in the 1930s.
For the 1887 ball, the elite dressed in old-fashioned costumes and wore their hair powdered white.
Entertainment included traveling minstrel shows and occasionally a big name, such as Emma Thursby, an acclaimed concert singer and teacher who had shared lyceum stages with humorist Mark Twain and famed violinist Ole Bull.
In Florida to visit a brother in Melbourne, Thursby packed the opera house with an audience from all over Central Florida in a benefit for the building fund of the local Episcopal congregation.
One suspects that most opera-house events took place in winter. Breezes that came through the large windows and double doors offered the only "air-conditioning"; a good picture of the double-door entrance is in the Florida State Archives, from an 1891 meeting of World's Fair delegates that included the state's then-governor, Francis P. Fleming.
Kerosene lamps with tin reflectors and candles on brackets provided the interior lighting.
By 1915, this first opera house was remodeled into a garage and auto-repair shop; the second opera house, which became the Lucerne Theater, would become the standard for performance venues.
This second opera house opened in December 1911 and boasted a 75-foot-tall scenery loft, an elevated floor for seating and a steel ceiling decked out in white and gold. It seated as many as 1,000 patrons.
'Aida' at Muny Aud
Real opera marked the opening of Orlando's next grand home for the performing arts: Orlando's Municipal Auditorium on West Livingston Street, which dates from the boom years of the 1920s and was transformed into the Bob Carr Performing Arts Centre in the 1970s.
On Feb. 21, 1927, the grand opening of "Muny Aud" featured the La Scala Grand Opera Company of Philadelphia presenting Verdi's Aida.
No air-conditioning here, either, for years, as many of us can attest.
"Back before air-conditioning, we used to call it the West Livingston Turkish Baths," Jean Yothers, retired director of the Orange County Historical Museum, told the Sentinel's Elizabeth Maupin.
"Once the Rainbow Girls had a convention there, and just about all of them fainted from the heat," Yothers recalled.
Over the years, Muny Aud drew all kinds of complaints.
The sound system was so bad, one theater promoter said of a performance, that one night (probably in the 1960s) star performer Liberace's body microphone was picking up police calls.
For a time in the late 1970s, the old Beacham downtown drew a variety of top performers in a smaller venue during its incarnation as the Great Southern Music Hall, a concert venue for plenty of touring performers, from Arlo Guthrie to Greg Allman.
And now, in our new performing-arts center, we're flying into the big time on the wings of an immense steel roof and three theaters designed in grand style, with Doc Phillips' name again meaning entertainment downtown.
There's no business like show business.