History

Canton’s industrial economy in the 1920s was built on steel, bearing manufacturing, and related industries that supplied the automobile and machinery sectors. The city’s population of working-class and middle-class families represented exactly the audience that theater chains targeted with movie palaces in the decade following World War I. The Palace opened in 1926 on Cleveland Avenue, which was Canton’s commercial main street, and immediately became the premier entertainment venue in northeastern Ohio’s Stark County.

Canton had another claim to national attention: it was the home of William McKinley, the 25th President of the United States, who launched his successful 1896 and 1900 presidential campaigns from his front porch on Market Street. The McKinley National Memorial, completed in 1907, dominates a hill on the western edge of downtown Canton. The Palace Theater opened less than two decades after the memorial’s completion, in a city that was simultaneously honoring its presidential past and building the commercial entertainment infrastructure of a 1920s industrial boomtown.

Like many 1920s picture palaces, the Palace’s commercial history as a cinema eventually gave way to declining attendance and periods of dormancy. Preservation efforts led to its restoration and reopening as a live performing arts venue, the Canton Palace Theatre, which now presents touring Broadway productions, concerts, and events in the restored interior.