Loew's Theatre
125 N. Main Street,
Dayton,
OH
45402
125 N. Main Street,
Dayton,
OH
45402
4 people
favorited this theater
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In its final year of operation, the Palace was busy with simulcast boxing, movies and live stage presentations including concerts that included acts such as Kiss, Queen and Barry Manilow. The theater went out in style with a vaudeville burlesque show on September 28, 1975. A salvage sale accompanied its demolition in October and November of 1975.
Reopened as Palace on February 9th, 1972. Grand opening ad in the photo section.
Grand opening ad:
Dayton theatre opening · Thu, May 2, 1918 – 16 · The Dayton Herald (Dayton, Ohio) · Newspapers.com
In over 46 years, starting here in the theatre business, it is the only theatre I have found the projection booth off the mezzanine shooting the picture from the front of the balcony,
I was part of the team that operated The Palace from 72-75. Though it is sad that the out of town ownership (NY based group that also owned the Empire State Bldg)elected to raze this historic movie monument it did provide many tremendous sold out rock n roll, funk, and jazz shows under the leadership of James Burt. The stage featured shows by emerging artists of the day like Aerosmith, Joe Walsh Barnstorm, Kiss, Kansas, Wishbone Ash, George Benson, Parliament Funkadelic, Jackson Browne with Phoebe Snow, Soft Machine, Hawkwind, Bachman Turner Overdive, and many, many more. BTW, the carpet on the upper loge level, which I was able to obtain some of, featured the lion logo along with the words Loews and Metro Goldwyn Pictures. It was before the entry of Louis B. Mayer onto the operation.
I worked here as an usher from June 1969 to June 1970, Carl Rogers had been manager from 1951 until 1970 when he transferred with Loews to Florida. He had a great 50th anniversary promotion in 1968. I go to walk the building just as the contractors where preparing to demolish the old palace. I wish I had gotten a piece of the balcony carpeting which featured the MGM lion logo.
http://youtu.be/xYhR_kHpJUY
Above is an url to a little video I posted on YouTube of the Loews Theatre. I used only the few photos that I had at the time so it is short.
When theatres like the Dayton came down in the 70’s for most likely Urban Renewal didn’t the folks of these communities ever think they would need or want a place to show movies, plays and musicals? They had this theatre and then let it be demolished for “an empty lot used for parking”.
Thanks to Ken Roe in the UK he directed my steps to the Loews Dayton Theatre only to read that this theatre is gone and that “the site remains an empty lot used for parking”. So sad and so shameful that Dayton no longer has this treasured cinema!
Schenck & Williams designed the Dayton Theatre in a restrained Beaux Arts style, as can be seen from the photographs here, in the August, 1920, issue of the professional journal Architecture. There’s also a floor plan. Scroll down to see a page with four interior photos.
The Internet Archive reader displays the photos as they were published, so some face sideways on the monitor, and there’s no mechanism for turning them right side up. Fortunately, they can be downloaded. Resize the pages using the + sign in the toolbar at lower right, then right click and save as usual. Any decent image viewer program should be able to rotate them. I’d recommend IrfanView for anyone who doesn’t have it. It’s free, and fairly easy to use.
Here’s an item from the trade journal The Ohio Architect, Engineer and Builder, issue of February 6, 1917. Datelined Dayton, it probably refers to this theater:
Taking more than a year to get a theater built in this period would have been unusual, except in 1917-1918, when the entry of the United States into the WWI led to some disruptions in both the labor market and the supply of building materials, especially in the industrial areas of the northeast.Schenck & Williams (Harry I. Schenck and Harry J. Williams) was one of Dayton’s leading architectural firms during the 1910s and 1920s. I haven’t found any other theaters attributed to them, but they designed many other major projects.
The orginal marquee looked very much like the LOEWS PALACE in Washington,D.C.
Great picture posted by Zack. The marquee looked great, different from most Loews marquees.
Carl Rogers was manager from 1951 to 1970 and a fantastic celebration/promotion of the 50th anniversary in 1968.
@Chuck1231 I think this is the link you meant to post:
View link
I probably saw more movies at this theater when I was growing up than in any other theater in Dayton. It was a very large theater with a large lobby and a huge marquee. WING radio used to do a noontime man-on-the-street broadcast each weekday here. The James Bond movies used to be exclusive here as were most of the MGM films. The Victory across the street got the Disney movies. Everything else seemed to go to the RKO Colonial, RKO Keith, and RKO State.
It was a fabulous looking theater inside and had a very large screen. I remember as a kid sneaking into the balcony from the fire escape stairs in the alley next to Rike’s Dept Store to see The 10 Commandments – oh yeah, I was playing hookey from school and needed to dodge the cops on the street cause I was scared of being caunt truant. I sat through an entire showing of that movie and in the following years saw many of the big hollywood movies there. It finally went down to be come a small vacant parking lot!