Built in 1928. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in
1976. A historic map-sheet match is not published yet. The record needs a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary.
From the record
“The Marion Palace Theatre is a movie palace constructed in 1928 in Marion, Ohio, United States for the Young Amusement Company. The original cost of the project was $500,000.”
Wikipedia article Palace Theatre (Marion, Ohio), CC BY-SA 4.0.
one of 14 National Register listings in Marion County · listed in 1976 · category: Building · built in 1928, by John Eberson · one of 1 National Historic Landmarks in Marion County.
National Register reference number.76001486- the number the National Park Service assigned this property when it was listed, and the key its nomination file is catalogued under at the National Archives.
Marion Township was originally covered with fine timber, except the low grounds, or swales, which were covered with grass, and would be so covered to this day were it not for the art of drainage, which the agricultural community have so assiduously cultivated of late years, with the hope that soon these low grounds will become permanently more fertile and profitable than the uplands. As a single tract of land, this township is the highest between Columbus and Toledo, according to the railroad survey, and is drained by natural water-courses toward all points of the compass except eastward, and in that direction ditching has been done to so great an extent within a few years that the land is, as it were, being raised up many feet above water level.
An inexhaustible supply of good building stone exists in this township, and even within the corporate limits of Marion Village, for an account of which see geology in the first chapter, and a sketch of the quarries in the chapter on Marion.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The
federal wildfire occurrence database
lists 6 fires within 5 miles of Palace Theater between
2002 and 2002, burning about 2 acres in total. None started naturally. 2 were recorded as arson.
Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a fire counted
here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.
Reported cause
Fires
Smoking
2
Missing data/not specified/undetermined
2
Arson/incendiarism
2
The most recent of
them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service
that recorded it.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. Museums hold 332 specimens
collected within 10 miles of Palace Theater between 1892 and
1975: 320 Animalia, 8 Fungi, 4 Plantae. 12 distinct Species records are shown.
Collected by A. Ogilvie, Acker, G., Baumgartner, L. and others. Each is a
physical object with a catalogue
number, and each entry opens the museum's record. This is what was
collected and kept, not a survey of what lives here - nothing can be
concluded from a species being absent.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists
6 workings within 5 miles of Palace Theater: 3 producers, 2 past producers, 1 plant.
4 still produce. What was taken out: Sand and Gravel, Construction, Limestone, General, Stone, Crushed/Broken. Distance is straight-line from the
map coordinates, so a quarry counted here may appear on a neighbouring
settlement's page as well.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The National Weather Service names
Marion, the town this property stands in, in 120 storm reports between 1994 and 2026: 68 thunderstorm wind, 48 hail, 3 tornado, 1 flood.
The reports record 1 death and 3 injuries. Each account below is quoted exactly as the forecast office
filed it, from the NOAA Storm Events Database, and each date
opens the federal record of that event.
A severe thunderstorm moved into Marion around 4:10 pm. Numerous trees, large limbs, utility poles and power lines came down during the storm. Reports indicate that many trees fell onto homes, garages and cars throughout the city. One of the houses was damaged enough to be considered destroyed. Between 30 and 35 utility poles had to be replaced because of trees and large limbs falling onto them. One house had three trees fall onto it causing extensive damage. A house in Marion that was being remodeled sustained damage by trees. Three people working on the house quickly took shelter on a porch during the storm, but were injuried when a tree fell onto the roof of the porch and collapsed the roof. A twenty-two year old girl was killed when a large tree limb fell onto the car while she was driving. A passenger in the vehicle survived with injuries. ||Additional support was called in to help clean up in Marion. Electric companies and municipal agencies coordinated to help clean up debris. Estimated costs for clean up in Marion were approximately $91 thousand. 369 loads of debris were cleaned up throughout the city.
A weak tornado touched down about four miles west of Marion and remained on the ground for a short time. A garage and two barns were destroyed and a large shed was badly damaged. Numerous trees and power lines were downed and some minor damage occurred to several homes in the area. Most of the damage appeared to be caused by an intense microburst, which accompanied the tornado. Winds were estimated at 80 to 90 miles per hour.
Thunderstorm winds downed several trees and large limbs across the southeastern corner of Marion County. A home in the City of Marion was damaged by a fallen tree. At least two vehicles were damaged by fallen trees. Scattered power outages were reported.
After recent heavy rains throughout the area over the past few days, another round of heavy rain moved through the area during the morning hours of the 22nd. With recent rainfall already saturating the ground and bringing streams and rivers to capacity, this additional rainfall led to flooding throughout northeastern Marion County. Tully, Scott, Claridon, and Richland Townships were most affected with many roads closed because of flooding. The water did not recede until the midday hours of the 23rd.
A small tornado touched down in rural Marion County about five miles north of Marion near the intersection of State Route 4 and U.S. Highway 23. The tornado was on the ground for only a couple hundred feet and caused no damage other than downing several trees.
The ASOS at the Marion Airport measured a 51 knot wind gust from a thunderstorm. Several trees were also blown down in Caledonia in eastern Marion County.
Numerous trees and large limbs were reported down from thunderstorm winds. Also, railroad gate crossing bars were broken due to severe thunderstorm winds.
Three power poles snapped at the intersection of Richland Road and Riviera Drive on the southeast side of Marion. Damage was caused by a line of rain showers.
1 paper published in this town,
digitised by the Library of Congress and free to read: 0 issues,
0 pages. Every page is searchable, so a name or a street can be
looked for directly in what the town printed about itself at the time.
No historic map-sheet match is published
for this property yet. That does not mean no map exists. This record needs
a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary.
Browse the county's mapped places while that work is
pending.
From the nomination file
2,899 words on record
When this property was proposed for the
National Register, someone wrote the case for it: what the building is,
and why it matters. That document is a federal record in the public domain.
It is quoted below word for word, never summarised. The text was read off the scanned case file by machine, so the
occasional stray character is the recogniser's and the 1970s
typewriter's.
Description of the property
Over the marquee a large, rectangular sign declaring "PALACE" in bold letters hangs the auditorium and stage facilities, are of varying heights. ornamented lobby which as as its focal point a winding stairway leading to the the balcony, which is cantilevered construction, one obtains a broad sweeping view arches; lifesize classical statues in decorative niches; and the soft light of a - harvest moon casting shadows over the somber-colored walls are clearly in view. Overhead, myriads of stars twinkle in an azure blue sky while soft fleecy clouds CONDITION UNEXPOSED EXCELLENT XALTERED CHECK ONE restored to its former glory. voussoirs.A diamond pattern of brick corbeling covers the area above the windows.
The Palace Theater is an irregularly massed brick building.The first story houses Opportunities for carrying out the Spanish effect in the mezzanine floor are greater best describe the details of this interior.The box office is approached directly drift gently across the sky. theater itself is thought to be quite fireproof.
from a false flemish-like gable which is elaborately decorated with medallions, The statuary was obtained from the Caproni Studios in Boston which furnished life- level has a band of round-arched,1/l pane windows connected by brick banding and Emergency exits from the theater are built within the walls of the building and the and each detail and scroll was of interest.It is hoped that the theater can be XORIGINAL SITE -UNALTERED _RUINS -FAIR The relatively plain exterior belies the elaborate interior. Spanish Rococco might than in the foyer. Here and there patches of red brick appear where plaster has fallen. Niches in the wall are cleverly adapted to hold drinking fountains.
The Palace Theater which opened in Marion, Ohio, on August 30, 1928, is one of the last of the movie houses built during the golden age of the silent cinema. John Eberson, its architect, was one of the two foremost theater designers of the twenties, the other his own office. Working with pioneers in the movie industry, he designed theaters, told him never to forget to feed the pigeons. That evening, Bank Kennedy, at the console of the golden voiced Page organ, played an original composition, "Everybody's such as Ted Lewis, Ben Bernie, Joe Penner, Buddy Rogers and many of the musical reviews - wind a set of dishes or perhaps a few hundred dollars.
Later in the 1940's the big band sound reverberated throughout the Palace as Goodman, the Dorseys, Ellington, and the other proponents of "swing" entertained Marion audiences. In the past two decades the Palace has been a center for the showing of films.
When 1928 1500-1599 1800-1899 1700-1799 ECONOMICS RELIGION EDUCATION COMMERCE BUILDER/ARCHITECT EXPLORATION/SETTLEMENT PHILOSOPHY SCULPTURE PERIOD INDUSTRY ARCHITECTURE MILITARY XTHEATER PREHISTORIC LITERATURE John Eberson SIGNIFICANCE TRANSPORTATION ARCHEOLOGY-PREHISTORIC _COMMUNICATIONS _POLITICS/GOVERNMENT opened with silent pictures and the sound system was not installed until its second Theater was designed by Eberson as a Spanish patio where friendly stars twinkled, Other outstanding theaters designed by Eberson were the Valencia and Paradise in New auditorium was one of the first air conditioned buildings in the city of Marion.
Quoted from the National Register nomination
for reference 76001486, 26 pages, held by the National Archives in Record
Group 79. See the
catalogue record.
Listed places nearby
6 within 8 miles
Other National Register properties close
enough to walk or drive between, ordered by distance from this one. Both
positions come from the same geocoding pass that matched these properties
to their map sheets.
Listing record. National Park Service National Register of Historic Places, listed-properties dataset, current to 2026-05-22.
Map join. Address geocoded through the United States Census geocoder, then tested against the published boundary of every sheet in the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection.
How this page is made. Listing fields come from federal records; map-sheet coverage is a labelled coordinate-to-boundary calculation, not a source-field claim.
Wildfire. Short, Karen C. 2022. Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014]. 6th Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6 Collected with United States Government funding and usable without additional permissions or fees.
Specimens. Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), https://www.gbif.org/. Only records licensed CC0 or CC BY are used. Records licensed CC BY-NC are excluded because this site carries advertising. Images are checked individually and any whose licence is non-commercial, no-derivatives or unreadable is refused.
Mines and quarries. USGS Mineral Resources Data System (MRDS) https://mrdata.usgs.gov/mrds/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.
Storms. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Storm Events Database https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/stormevents/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105. Narratives are quoted verbatim from the National Weather Service report and are not edited or summarised.
Block
