The theater anchored the district known as "Little Broadway," an area alive with hotels, restaurants and nightclubs frequented by black and white tourists and residents.

It served the community as a movie and vaudeville theater for almost fifty years, and was a symbol of black economic influence – free of discrimination – and a source of pride and culture within Overtown.

Visiting luminaries like Mary McLeod Bethune, Ethel Waters, and the Fisk Jubilee Singers lectured and sang at the Lyric.

By 1989, the Theater, the lone surviving building in "Little Broadway," was listed in the National Register of Historic Places, and Phase 1 of restoration of the former showplace began.

Adjacent to the central downtown business district of Miami, it is an anchor site of the Historic Overtown Folklife Village.