Palace Theatre

Joe Vogel on August 26, 2021 at 9:26 pm

The Palace didn’t make it into the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory, but a very brief article from the local historical society (PDF here) says that it opened in February, 1914, and its advertisements vanished from the local paper by 1919. The building which had housed the Palace burned to the ground in 1948 and was replaced by a W.T. Grant store, now also demolished.

I’ve been unable to puzzle out the exact location of the Palace, but the article indicates that it was on part of what is now a small park and the parking lot for the Downeast Heritage Center, which is at 39 Union Street. The parking area is quite long, and the earliest aerial view at Historic Aerials is from 1996, by which time much of the area had already been demolished, so I can’t find the street corner the Palace was on. Judging from old photos and aerial views, it was across the street from some surviving historic buildings on the south side of the street, roughly between the shops now occupied by Kendall’s Jewelers at 293 Main and Artemis’s Attic at 311 Main, so the Palace must have been at approximately 300 Main Street.