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Opened 25 January 1915 – demolished (year not documented in the sources searched)
Founded: The Palace Theatre stood at 126 East Washington Boulevard. Its builders and owner-managers were Frank E. Stouder — who was also managing the Masonic Temple and Temple Theatre in the spring of 1914 — and Byron H. Barnett. Ground was broken on 26 May 1914, with a Thanksgiving opening hoped for; the house opened on 25 January 1915. The Chicago theatre architects C. W. and George Rapp (Rapp & Rapp) designed it: a steel-frame house advertised in the Fort Wayne Sentinel of 31 October 1914 as "absolutely fireproof," built for the B. F. Keith vaudeville circuit, with a capacity of 2,000 — 1,700 on the main floor and balcony and 300 in loges and boxes. Its scenery was a point of pride: the scenic artist Thomas G. Moses came to Fort Wayne in 1914 to see Stouder about the new Palace's scenery, and fire-proof stage scenery was the house's advertised speciality.
Course: In 1930 the Palace was taken over by RKO, which closed it in 1931. It reopened on 24 December 1933, still as the Palace Theatre. In 1957, displaced from the demolished Majestic, the Fort Wayne Civic Theatre moved into the Palace, and in 1965 the house was renamed the Civic Playhouse Theatre. The Civic remained until 1973, when it left for the new Performing Arts Center.
Fate: The building was later demolished; the year of demolition is not documented in the sources searched. Two other Fort Wayne houses carried the Palace name at other addresses and are not this theatre: an earlier Palace at 1441 Wells Street (built 1900, renamed the Wells Theatre in 1917) and the later movie houses of the same name.
Sources:
- Cinema Treasures, Palace Theatre (Fort Wayne) — the address, the 1915 opening, the RKO years, the 1933 reopening, the 1965 renaming.
- Wendy Waszut-Barrett, "Tales from a Scenic Artist and Scholar," Part 871 (drypigment.net, 2019), citing the Fort Wayne News and Sentinel of 1914 — Stouder and Barnett, the Keith circuit, the capacity, the ground-breaking, Rapp & Rapp, the fireproof construction.
- ACGSI Allen County place pages — the Civic Theatre's 1957 move into the Palace on East Washington Boulevard and its 1973 departure.
- Fort Wayne Business Journal — the separate Wells Street Palace of 1900.