A.B. Edwards, Sarasota's first mayor, imagined the Sarasota Opera House at 61 North Pineapple Avenue, which opened on April 10, 1926, as the Edwards Theatre. It opened on April 10, 1926, as the Edwards Theatre, a three-story landmark that originally housed eight shops on the ground floor, 12 offices on the second floor and 12 furnished apartments on the third. Roy A. Benjamin designed it in Mediterranean Revival Style Architecture and the GA Miller Construction Company built it.
Inside the theatre's auditorium there was an orchestral pipe organ; today the house is the home of the Sarasota Opera Association, Inc., the parent body that runs the Sarasota Opera, and the building seats 1,119. In the bustling 1920s it quickly became a magnet for major performers — Will Rogers appeared in 1927 and the Ziegfeld Follies came in 1928 — and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune praised Edwards for "having admitted Sarasota into a fairyland of costly decoration, rich furnishings and never to be forgotten artistry. Picture Will Rogers taking the stage in 1927, the Ziegfeld Follies following in 1928, beneath the three-story façade with its shops, offices, and apartments.