Tower Theatre

The Tower Theatre was the first theater designed by renowned architect S. Charles Lee, as well as the first movie palace in downtown wired for sound films. The Tower was designed in the French Renaissance motif with Spanish, Romanesque and Moorish influences. Through decades of different operation, it was known as the Newsreel and the Music Hall. The Tower returned to its original name after a major renovation in the early 1960s. Its main-floor seats were removed in expectation of being converted to an indoor swap meet. Thankfully, that use never materialized. The location remained dormant until 1991 when Warner Brothers temporarily converted the venue into Miami’s ‘Empire Ballroom’ as a key movie set for Mambo Kings. That film’s art department took advantage of the Tower’s missing main floor seats and installed a semi-permanent floating wood dance floor that remains today.