The Palace Theater was opened in early-March 1937 with 650 seats, replacing an earlier 1926 built Palace Theatre which was destroyed by fire in September 1936. After closing in the 1980’s the building deteriorated badly.
In 2010 the Childress Theatre Company’s Palace restoration committee oversaw the restoration and re-installed the original 1937 neon sign. In 2011, they restored the Art Deco style facade with new plaster and the original colors (according to a 1941 color-tinted photograph in their possession). In 2012, a new roof was put on the building, the first replacement since the Palace Theater was built.
By spring 2013, there is still much work to be done inside the building, but a completion and anticipated re-opening of the Palace Theater is anticipated for the fall of 2014, in time for a Childress County All-School Reunion. Fundraising continues throughout each year, and grants and other specially designated gifts are being applied for.
The Palace Theater was designated as a Historic Landmark by Texas Historical Commission in 2005. The town of Childress was named in 2013 as ‘Texas Mainstreet Community’, and the Palace Theater will be the flagship of downtown Childress in a formal announcement by the First Lady of Texas, Anita Perry, at a ceremony taking place in front of the Palace Theater on March 28, 2013.
A summer fundraiser was held on June 29, 2013. Renovations were carried out in 2018 and it reopened in February 2019 with 250 seats in the orchestra level (the balcony is currently closed).
