Palace Theater
5 Wick Avenue at Central Square,
Youngstown,
OH
44502
5 Wick Avenue at Central Square,
Youngstown,
OH
44502
2 people
favorited this theater
The Keith Albee Palace Theater was located at 5 Wick Avenue at Central Square in the heart of downtown Youngstown, Ohio. The theater opened on March 16, 1926 and remained in operation for only thirty eight years. The opening act was Betty & Burt Wheeler, an outstanding dance and comedy team of the 1920’s.
In 1928, the theater converted to sound equipment and as vaudeville faded into the past, the Palace Theater still retained a steady billing of live entertainment including the Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey Bands, The Glen Miller Orchestra, Paul Whiteman, Horace Heidt, and others.
A Neo-Classical style building, the theater had many unique features including an underground tunnel linking it with The Tod Hotel across Central Square.
The theater closed on Sunday, November 29, 1964. The closing picture was “First Men In The Moon”. The lavish interior appointments were dismantled and sold at auction prior to demolition.
The site still remains a parking lot thirty eight years after the Palace Theater closed it’s doors.
Contributed by
John C. Harris
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Recent comments (view all 62 comments)
wolfgirl500 – Thanks so much for the links! For some reason I never got a notice that you posted anything. I logged in today to get general info on theaters that they played at. THANKS!!!!
wolfgirl500 – Forgot to mention, my aunts also played there in March of 1936 with Ina Ray Hutton.
Here are two ads for the Ina Ray Hutton show. It got rave reviews here in Youngstown. SEE THEM IN THE PHOTOS SECTION.
wolfgirl500 ~ WOW you are awesome, can’t thank you enough for these! (Could you post the first one a bit bigger? Hope it is okay to ask that!) Any idea of how I can get an ad for the week before when they were at the Orpheum in Akron? I am creating a scrapbook for all of the Great Grandchildren. Thanks again!
I tried to blow the ads up to a larger size but unfortunately they became unreadable. The process I use is to get what I want as large as possable on the screen and then print screen, copying it to Paint to save, and then edit it with a photo editor, Google News doesn’t permit saving so I have to use this roundabout method. The ads appeared in the March 22, and 24 edition of the Youngstown Vindicator on the theater page.
I’ve posted another cropped ad that might be better for your purpose.
Thanks! For some reason the print screen on my dumb keyboard does not do anything – can’t even do what you do. I will find them on google (although it drives me crazy) and send link to husband at work.
The way I do it is when there is something I want to save at GoogleNews, I get it as large as I can, then click on print screen, then open up Paint click on Edit and then paste. The whole screen shows, and I save the file to a folder with an unique file name. I then go to my photo editor to crop out what I need, enlarge it and save the final product. It really doesn’t take very long to do … a couple of minutes at best.
I followed your steps and still did not work – think it has more to do with my keyboard possibly. Not a problem tho. I save the page under favorites and then send to hubby!
I remember seeing many great movies and “stage shows” at the Palace, back in the 1940’s & 1950’s. That was the big-band era, and many of them played the Palace, where I seen many of them. Count Basie, Duke Ellington, the Dorsey Brothers, Charley Spevak, etc., etc. And in later years, about 1958 to early 1960’s there was a group of us who hung-out at Rodney-Ann’s, sandwich & coffee shop. We, for the most part, attended the local college (YU/YSU)and some of us had night classes. Rodney Ann’s had great sandwiches, coffee, and ice-cream. Rodney-Ann’s was located to the left of the Palace Theatre (as you entered the theatre), and there were the large glass doors where you could exit from the Palace into Rodney-Ann’s, but not the reverse. The Palace was a very beautifull theatre, with a majestic lobby, and a series of really fine balaconies on the upper levels. To most locals, at that time, they mourned it’s destruction. And it appears that the downtown Youngstown never did recover. And so it was!!