Palace Theater
437 Main Street,
Peoria,
IL
61602
437 Main Street,
Peoria,
IL
61602
3 people
favorited this theater
Showing 26 - 28 of 28 comments
Many years ago I was in Peoria looking at a Frank Lloyd Wright built home so wasn’t into theatres though it had been demolished by then anyway. Hard to read this in a previous post: “It was corporate greed & a direspectful blow to the culture of Peoria when the Philistine developer Ray Heinz tore down Peoria landmarks.”
On V-E Day 1945, my father parked our car under the marquee of the Palace Theater,& put me, age six, on top of the car. It was incredible. Crowds filled the streets; traffic froze to a standstill; there was joy & laughter & crying & singing & from the top of the buildings across the street from the Palace, revelers threw rolls of toilet paper in rolling arcs streaming through the air. I can never forget how relieved we all were that the war was over. I enjoyed many stage shows & thousands of movies at the Palace. It was corporate greed & a direspectful blow to the culture of Peoria when the Philistine developer Ray Heinz tore down Peoria landmarks.
The Palace was indeed a beautiful theater and seated slightly more than the Madison on the opposite corner of Main & Madison. However, the Madison in my memory was considered the “premiere” downtown house, which ran single features when all the others, including the Palace, ran doubles.