The Connor Palace, also known as the Palace Theatre and historically as the

RKO RKO Radio Pictures Inc., commonly known as RKO Pictures or simply RKO, was an American film production and distribution company, one of the "Big Five" film studios of Hollywood's Golden Age. The business was formed after the Keith-Albee-Orpheu ...

Palace, is a

theater Theatre or theater is a collaborative form of performing art that uses live performers, usually actor, actors or actresses, to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place, often a stage. The p ...

located at 1615 Euclid Avenue in

Downtown Cleveland Downtown Cleveland is the central business district of Cleveland, Ohio. The economic and symbolic center of the city and the Cleveland-Akron-Canton, OH Combined Statistical Area, it is Cleveland's oldest district, with its Public Square laid out b ...

Ohio Ohio () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Of the fifty U.S. states, it is the 34th-largest by area, and with a population of nearly 11.8 million, is the seventh-most populous and tenth-most densely populated. The sta ...

, part of

Playhouse Square Playhouse Square is a theater district in downtown Cleveland, Ohio, United States. It is the largest performing arts center in the US outside of New York City (only Lincoln Center is larger). Constructed in a span of 19 months in the early 1920s, ...

. The theater opened in 1922, as Keith's Palace Theatre after

B. F. Keith Benjamin Franklin Keith (January 26, 1846 – March 26, 1914) was an American vaudeville theater owner, highly influential in the evolution of variety theater into vaudeville. Biography Early years Keith was born in Hillsboro Bridge, New ...

, founder of the Keith-Albee chain of vaudeville and movie theaters. It was designed by the

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

architectural firm of

Rapp and Rapp C. W. & George L. Rapp, commonly known as Rapp & Rapp, was an American architectural firm famed for the design of movie palaces and other theatres. Active from 1906 to 1965 and based in Chicago, the office designed over 400 theatres, includ ...

in the French Renaissance style, and originally housed live two-a-day

vaudeville Vaudeville (; ) is a theatrical genre of variety entertainment born in France at the end of the 19th century. A vaudeville was originally a comedy without psychological or moral intentions, based on a comical situation: a dramatic composition ...

shows. The $2 million theater opened in the

Keith Building The Keith Building is a skyscraper in downtown Cleveland, Ohio's Playhouse Square theater district. The Keith is 272 feet tall and 21 stories, and houses the Palace Theater, a former flagship theater of the Keith vaudeville circuit. Retrieved on ...

on November 6, 1922, seating 3,100. The interior featured Carrara marble and 154 crystal chandeliers, and the main lobby, dubbed the "Great Hall," was decorated with over 30 paintings. The advent of the motion-picture age led to the gradual replacement of the vaudeville acts with movies, although vaudeville maintained a presence at the theater until the 1950s. The Palace was subsequently transformed for the presentation of widescreen Cinerama, which required the removal of 1,800 seats. On July 20, 1969, the theater closed because of air-conditioning trouble, and remained closed due to financial difficulty. In November 1973, the Playhouse Square Foundation obtained the lease for the Palace, and began producing

cabaret Cabaret is a form of theatrical entertainment featuring music, song, dance, recitation, or drama. The performance venue might be a pub, a casino, a hotel, a restaurant, or a nightclub with a stage for performances. The audience, often dining or d ...

shows in the partially reopened theater to attract attention to its efforts to restore Playhouse Square. In 1978, the theater was added to the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

, along with the rest of the historic Playhouse Square theaters. After a $36.4 million renovation project, the Palace completely reopened in 1988 with 2,714 seats, making it the second-largest theater in Playhouse Square. The Palace was renamed the Connor Palace in 2014 to recognize a donation of nine million dollars to the Playhouse Square capital campaign by the Connor Family of

Hunting Valley, Ohio Hunting Valley is a village in Cuyahoga and Geauga counties in the U.S. state of Ohio, and an eastern suburb of the Greater Cleveland area. As of the 2010 census, the village population was 707. At the 2000 census, it was ranked the 6th highest- ...

. George Burns and Gracie Allen were married on the stage of the Palace Theatre by a

justice of the peace A justice of the peace (JP) is a judicial officer of a lower or ''puisne'' court, elected or appointed by means of a commission ( letters patent) to keep the peace. In past centuries the term commissioner of the peace was often used with the sa ...

in 1926.

References

"Amazing facts and figures"
Playhouse Square Center. 2003–2005. Accessed December 3, 2006.
"The Keith Building"
Emporis. 2006. Accessed December 3, 2006. {{authority control Theatres in Cleveland National Register of Historic Places in Cleveland, Ohio Theatres on the National Register of Historic Places in Ohio Cinemas and movie theaters in Ohio Movie palaces Cinema of Cleveland Historic district contributing properties in Ohio Theatres completed in 1922