Palace Theater

A January 12, 1992 Philadelphia Inquirer article describes how a grocer, Jacob A. Kettering, showed movies in a circus tent at nearby Cricket Avenue & Lancaster Avenue until a big storm ripped the tent apart. He then opened the Palace Theater in 1914 for vaudeville & movies, but live shows were not successful. Movies were a nickel. In 1922, he sold the theater for a great deal of money to new owners who shut down the movie theater, and in that same year, the Ardmore Theater, a huge movie palace, opened nearby.

In 1926-1927 a new building, the Rittenhouse Arcade, with an open corridor from front to back lined with small stores, was built on the site. Woolworth’s took over the whole ground floor in the 1930’s. It is now a retail store called Party Place. You can recognize the new building as it has seven terra-cotta owls on its facade, and a lantern type sconce on its upper story.

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