Palace Theatre
34 West Broad Street,
Columbus,
OH
43215
34 West Broad Street,
Columbus,
OH
43215
12 people
favorited this theater
The Keith-Albee Palace Theatre was opened in November 1926 as a grand vaudeville and movie house. It became the RKO Palace Theatre (Radio Keith Orpheum) in 1929. After almost fifty years of first run films, the Palace Theatre was forced to close its doors.
The theater was purchased in 1989 by the CAPA organization and is a now a premier venue for concerts, stage shows and more.
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Recent comments (view all 32 comments)
The phototgraph credit in the introduction is ridiculous: “Photo courtesy of the public domain.” Just think about it!
One very odd thing about this theatre is that when you walk into the balcony, it feels like you are leaning to the side. VERY disconcerting! I experienced it as a child and then again, many years later, when I attended a concert. My dad told me one time that he hated going there for the same reason.
No idea why this happens…probably some type of optical illusion.
1973 photo of the Palace Theatre.
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1975 photo of the Palace Theastre poster cases.
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Another photo of the Palace Thearte, undated.
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1982 photo of the Palace Theatre.
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1985 photo of the Palace Theatre.
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Here is a recent shot of the Palace.
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10tv story on the Palace. COLUMBUS, Ohio – The Palace Theatre in downtown Columbus has been home to prime entertainment for decades.
The theatre, located in the LeVeque Towner on Broad Street, opened 86 years ago as a Vaudeville house, 10TV’s Jerry Revish reported.
“I saw Lucille Ball play here, Jack Benny was here. Bill Bojangles Robinson played here,” said Todd Bemis of the Columbus Association For the Performing Arts, which manages the theater. “All the greats at that time found their way to Columbus through the front doors of the Palace.”
The theater had a huge boom when Mae West came to town in 1938.
“There’s a photo of folks literally wrapped around the outside of the building waiting to buy tickets to get into see Mae West,” Bemis said.
The Palace Theatre became home to big bands in the 1940s.
“They used to have what they called a rolling stage on the theater,” Bemis said. “They would still show a movie maybe before the jazz concert, but then the movie screen would go out, and the jazz band or the big band would start to play, and they would literally roll them down to the front of the state, to the great applause of the audience.”
Business slowed in the 1960s, though, Revish reported.
“Many of the furnishings of the theater disappeared during that period, all the crystal was stripped out of the theater during the period because they didn’t want to maintain it, keep it clean,” Bemis said. “The wonderful brass doors that we have in our inner lobby, they just painted them rather than polish them, so there were seven coats of paint on those doors applied during that time.”
The problems continued until Frederic LeVeque came along and purchased the theater in 1973.
“The theater actually would have been demolished at that time, and his hotel was to expand from the theater up to Broad and High,” Bemis said.
LeVeque died in a plane crash and was not able to complete his plans.
Years later, his widow decided to reopen the theater after spending $3 million of her own money to renovate the building. She added new seats, plumbing, wiring and a new roof.
“There was nothing really usable in the theater,” Bemis said.
The Osmand family debuted the newly renovated theater.
“I’ll always remember that, they took over two full floors of the Neil House at that time,” Bemis said. “They had such a large entourage.”
Bemis said that the Palace Theatre has brought value to Columbus.
“It’s what I like to call the workhorse of our theaters in downtown, because it does such a wide range,” Bemis said.
They used to have a yearly Three Stooges show at the theater; it was always 8 shorts with an intermission halfway through. One year Moe’s son-in-law Norman Maurer was in attendance and told some great stories. In recent years they’ve become too “upscale” for that sort of thing. That’s a major problem I’ve seen in Columbus for the last couple of decades; they’re trying so hard to be gentrified and sophisticated that the old-fashioned fun side of the city is nowhere to be found. The decision makers in this town today would consider something like a Stooges show to be beneath the city’s dignity or something. Sad.
As many times as I was scheduled to fly in and out of Columbus for TWA I have always found the people very down to earth and quite a friendly people. I would take them over the people living in Cleveland any day.
The Three Stooges appeared at the Loew’s State in St. Louis for a number of years presented by Romper Room. They would go out in the audience and visit with the kids ands pull their usual antics.
People, yes; the city planners and folks who program entertainment downtown, not so much. There’s just a palpable sense of “look how sophisticated we’re becoming” in Columbus that seems to be sapping some of the fun out of the city. But maybe it’s just my perception.