Palace Theater
212 Sycamore Street,
Muscatine,
IA
52761
212 Sycamore Street,
Muscatine,
IA
52761
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1940s facade.
http://www.umvphotoarchive.org/digital/collection/muspl/id/1959?fbclid=IwAR2KidO7s8_rRPGi0g9kxYbfUaTc45_DlbjQWDVmxNi76TvYjfMNTqEB928
This item from the July 19, 1913, issue of The American Contractor is probably about the Palace Theatre, which was originally owned by E. M. Henle:
Architect John H. Ladehoff also designed the Orpheum Theatre in Clinton, built in 1907.Three pages of historic photos of Muscatine theaters, including a 1940 shot of the original Palace, were published in Muscatine Magazine, issue of Winter, 2012.
I can’t find a direct link to the exact page the article starts on. It only opens to the cover of the magazine. Click the arrow to the right of the cover to turn the page three times to reach the theater article. Click on the image of the magazine itself to enlarge it.
A section about the A-Muse-U Theatre on this web page says that E. M. Henley built the Palace Theatre in 1914. The Palace Theatre was listed at 212 Sycamore Street in the 1916 Muscatine city directory.
The May 25, 1945, issue of the Muscatine Journal said that the new Palace Theatre would open on May 29. One courtesy advertisement congratulated the Bosten family on their new theater, so they were the owners even then.
Muscatine had two Palace Theatres. An item in the May 5, 1945, issue of Boxoffice Magazine said that Fox Midwest had announced that the opening of the new Palace Theatre was scheduled for May 8. The item said that the new house replaced a theater of the same name which had burned the previous year. It didn’t say if the new theater was on the same site as the original Palace.
An article about Ludy Bosten, a long-time Muscatine exhibitor, published in Boxoffice Magazine on April 9, 1962, said that he had operated the Palace Theatre for a time, but didn’t specify the period. It did say that the Palace had closed two years earlier, though, suggesting that he had taken over the second Palace, perhaps in the early 1950s when various Fox operating companies were required by the courts to divest themselves of many of their theaters.
The 1940s were a bad time for Muscatine’s historic theaters. The Grand burned down the same year the new Palace opened.