Palace Theater
437 Main Street,
Peoria,
IL
61602
437 Main Street,
Peoria,
IL
61602
3 people
favorited this theater
Additional Info
Previously operated by: Ascher Brothers Inc., Balaban & Katz Corp., Plitt Theatres, Publix Theaters Corporation
Architects: William L. Pereira, John Edmund Oldaker Pridmore
Previous Names: Ascher's Palace Theatre
Nearby Theaters
The Palace Theatre opened on January 6, 1921, and was built and owned by William Hull. It was at one time the best known of the many theaters which once stood in downtown Peoria. It was equipped with a Moller 3 manual 21 ranks organ.
The vaudeville house was remodeled in 1929 into a movie palace. It was remodeled again in 1936 to the plans of architect William L. Pereira. It also played host to some of the biggest names in entertainment of the era, including Burns & Allen, Duke Ellington, and Ozzie and Harriet. The saying "If it’ll play Peoria" meant that if you were a hit here, you were on your way to the big time.
The theatre was sold to Publix Great States chain in 1963 and the exterior was given a facelift and in 1974, Plitt Theatres took over Publix. The theater closed on February 6, 1980 with Steve Martin in “The Jerk”. It was torn down, along with several other historic structures, to make way for the Twin Towers Place development.
Contributed by
Bryan Krefft, Ken Roe
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Recent comments (view all 29 comments)
I wish it was like this again down there.
Everybody keeps saying some guy by the name of Heinz tore down the Palace. That’s not the right name. The name you’re looking for is developer Ray Becker. I know this to be true because my dad was working for Becker Bros. Construction at the time. He even tried to convince Ray that tearing down the Palace was a crime. Ray lives at the top of one of the twin towers to this very day.
1966 photo added, photo credit Peoria Public Library. Partial marquee photo.
Have very fond memories of this theater. I was 20 when I first came to Peoria and saw many movies there. The best and most memorable was “Star Wars”. I saw it opening night, at the first showing. We got into the theater just as the balcony was being opened and we got the center sits in the front row; put us dead center to the screen.
Hm, in my memory “Star Wars” ran at the Rialto (rather than the Palace), which fell near the same time and in similar fashion, to make way for Civic Center construction. I saw it at the Rialto in the fall of ‘77, some weeks into its run. Of course one must remember that few realized at its release that it would be a major hit- it was viewed as simply another in a line of sci-fi interest movies. Also there wasn’t yet the concept of a “blockbuster” movie. A hint at that had come a couple years before with “Jaws”. I did see “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” and “Every Which Way But Loose” at the Palace in its final years.
Also the catchphrase was “If it will play in Peoria, it will play anywhere”. Meaning not that Peoria can particularly discern quality, but rather that it’s an “everyman” community with tastes predictive for success across geography and social strata. Peoria was once widely used as a test market for various products.
I might take issue with declaring the Palace to be the “best known” downtown theater. Across the street stood the Madison, which was at the least its equal. It almost amazingly still stands after decades of closure and neglect but finally seems on the cusp of being saved and renovated.
Cute stories, Zephyrscribe. Is the theatre still standing and operating as a restored theatre or is it now a .. parking lot?
@Patsy, unfortunately the Palace was lost to shortsighted “progress” in 1980. The land it sat on was later filled by the lackluster Becker office building on the same central business block that Peoria’s twin towers sit on. The Palace should have been saved as the future Peoria symphony hall.
Thank you, Mark. Does Peoria have an historic theatre without the Palace? Where does the Peoria Synphony perform?
Why was the Palace demolished in 1980? Besides “shortsighted progress” and plain ignorance.
Plitt Theatres closed the Palace Theatre on February 6, 1980 with Steve Martin in “The Jerk” in its 8th week. Plitt turned out to be the jerks having announced the closure publicly for February 10, 1980 and advertising two February 7, 1980 shows that did not play because their insurance had run out on the venue the previous night. Fans of the theater were denied their final showings.
Reading the above, yes, the Palace should have been saved without question; but it was actually saved once prior. Its final 16+ years from 1963 to 1980 were on borrowed time and only happened because of a deal with Publix Great States Theatres and a local hospital that had received the property in an estate / will.
A potential Palace Theatre restoration would have been challenging other than the amazing facade. That’s because of the major transformation to streamline moderne in 1936 when the Palace lost some of its most significant interior elements and Plitt’s austerity-centric 1967 alterations - to say nothing of asbestos abatement and ADA challenges that would have been ahead.
Doesn’t really help matters, of course, and the City of Peoria very much failed to save the Rialto. A fairly feasible proposal was drafted to place it within the Civic Center project instead of being bulldozed. The Rialto project would have been significantly more challenging and expensive; yet it would have shown that the City valued architecture - which it clearly did not. This was due to the economic pressure at that time with its central business district in free fall greyfield status collapse with retail moving to Northwoods Mall and other strip shopping complexes.
And this has been said I’m sure earlier, but the Peoria Preservation Alliance did get the Palace’s amazing facade elements carefully removed and stored at demolition in 1981. But those elements were lost forever in a January 1984 storage facility housing them was lost to fire. Ironically, whatever was left of the Palace in that facility was ground into oblivion as the former Beeney Warehouse was demolished just days later.