Historic Lyric Theater

Homestalgia Archive

Community memory · Nov 10, 2026

Verified

Geder Walker, a Black businessman from Georgia who came to Miami before 1900, built the Lyric Theater in 1913 and owned and ran it himself. The 400-seat theater anchored the Overtown entertainment district known as Little Broadway. A 1915 Miami Metropolis article called it possibly the most beautiful and costly playhouse owned by Black people in the South. After Walker died in 1919, his wife Henrietta kept it running, and it doubled as a community auditorium for school performances and graduations. It became a church in 1959 and later closed. The Black Archives bought it in 1988, and it is the only surviving building of Little Broadway.

Source: The Black Archives History & Research Foundation of South Florida, Historic Lyric Theater history; Miami Metropolis (1915), theater description reproduced by the Black Archives