The Palace Theatre - Grapevine, TX
N 32° 56.343 W 097° 04.707
14S E 679640 N 3646168
The Palace Theatre is at 300 S Main St, Grapevine, TX. Now complemented by another historic building next door to form the Palace Arts Center, the vintage neon sign still advertises the attraction.
Waymark Code: WMY37T
Location: Texas, United States
Date Posted: 04/11/2018
Views: 1
The physical sign is red, with "Palace" in white letters. When the lights go on, though, red neon trim goes around the border, with yellow neon illuminating the letters.
The Palace Theatre is also a contributing building to the Grapevine Commercial Historic District on the National Register of Historic Places, as is the building next door, formerly a grocery store that is now the Lancaster Theatre. Together, they are a showpiece on historic Main Street, and the Palace Arts Center is today a place to see performances and movies, and they have space available for meetings, banquets, receptions, and other large functions.
The National Register's Continuation Sheet notes that "Kirby Buckner also developed local entertainment businesses and opened the first Palace Theater in the mid-1920s in the 300 block of South Main." The Boundary Increase form for the district provides a description of this second incarnation of the Palace:
The New Palace Theater was built at a cost of $25,000. Described in the Grapevine Sun as a "structure [that] would fit well in any large city," the theater's front facade was "white stucco with maroon tile extending for a height of seven feet along the front. Poster frames [were] built into the tile and [were] covered with glass. The attraction board [served] as a border for [a] V shaped marquee that [could] accommodate two lines of lettering 16 feet long, with two tubes of white florescent neon behind each line of letters (Grapevine Sun, 1940).
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Note that while this building is listed on the Continuation Sheet as 308 S Main, the conjoined 308 and 310 are now 300 S Main St. In Arcadia's Images of America "Grapevine", by the Grapevine Historical Society, there are a few photos of the theater in days gone by, noting its 2000 restoration.