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1. Jim says:

   October 9, 2012 at 8:47 am

   Thanks for these pics. What great memories of Saturday matinees with my buddies. We loved the balcony!

2. Michael Arve says:

   October 9, 2012 at 9:12 am

   great photos I so remember the Palace along with the Loewe’s, Paramount and Regent. Those were the days when Rochester still had a vibrant downtown. I miss it. Hopefully there will be a resurgence of urban life in the heart of Rochester with good restaurants, theatres and movie houses. But I doubt it.

3. RochesterSubway.com says:

   October 9, 2012 at 9:37 am

   @Michael, I believe you can see the Paramount Theater in the 3rd shot. That’s the marquee on Mortimer St.

4. Lisa says:

   October 9, 2012 at 10:47 am

   We went to check out the unearthed remnants a couple weeks ago. What a shame. Yet somehow it seems we never learn. Thank you SO much for sharing these.

5. Mike J. says:

   October 9, 2012 at 11:44 am

   Thank you for sharing such great photos and all the history, it is apreciated by many.

6. Carlos Mercado says:

   October 9, 2012 at 12:45 pm

   Mike, I was in that theater to see “The Robe” in 1954, but I was only 8 and do not remember much. And my parents did not tell me there was a trolley subway near by. Such child abuse! I have never been able to figure out the inner and outer lobby configuration. From your captions it sounds lie the main lobby was accessed directly from Clinton Ave. while the outer narrower lobby was accessed from Mortimer? Is this right? I know the Paramount had a similar situation since it still existed, along with the Regent, when I moved here in 1968.

7. RochesterSubway.com says:

   October 9, 2012 at 1:24 pm

   @Carlos, yes you’ve got it. You entered the front lobby from Clinton. The front/main lobby was long and narrow and was perpendicular to the transverse lobby which was also rather long and narrow. The transverse lobby ran north/south and the doors to the auditorium were here. You could enter the south end of the transverse lobby from Mortimer, and there were also doors at the north end of it which I guess just led out to an alley. All of these entrances had rather ornate overhangs. You’ll be able to see this in the photos I will post tomorrow.

8. Lori says:

   October 9, 2012 at 2:26 pm

   Totally love all these pieces you bring to life. Thanks for your dedication!!!

9. Pat Barnes says:

   October 9, 2012 at 3:22 pm

   My mother would take my sister and I to movies downtown often. I loved the beauty of them at a young age. It is too bad that that was not appreciated by the powers that be in the city and they could have saved all those beautiful buildings.

10. Carlos Mercado says:

    October 9, 2012 at 3:59 pm

    Pat, It’s hard to remember 55 years ago, but people just did not value these historic buildings. They were still too common and we did not realize how quickly they would all be gone. We also thought that big cars and superhighways would solve all our transportation problems. It was a different time, but we are still paying for their mistakes.

11. Michael Arve says:

    October 9, 2012 at 4:04 pm

    Carlos – you are so right. I remember my Dad saying back when they were talking about getting rid of the subway and building the expressway, that what they should have done was extend the subway to the suburbs. Of course the inner loop totally strangled downtown rochester. Our public transportatipon system today is a joke.

12. Dave DiPonzio says:

    October 10, 2012 at 6:58 am

    I love this blog. I wish this place could have been saved. It’s really sad. Cannot wait for more interesting blogs and photographs. Hopefully someone will come forward with old midtown photographs some day like the Rochester Theater Organ Society did.

13. Richard Neidich says:

    October 10, 2012 at 11:16 am

    The three photos starting with one labeled
    ‘Lobby Entry” are from Loews Rochester Theater, not the RKO Palace.

14. Richard Neidich says:

    October 10, 2012 at 11:22 am

    Got label wrong, Loews Rochester pictures are the three starting with “Entry to Balcony”. The reason is obvisous, the chandlers are not those of RKO Palace lobby. I took some of the RKO pictures, including those of Jay Golden, the RKO Theaters District Manager, whose office was in the theater.

15. RochesterSubway.com says:

    October 10, 2012 at 11:24 am

    @Richard, I’m not sure how that could be, but I will look into it. Just so I’m sure we’re talking about the same photos, are the #8, #9, #10 in order from the top?

16. RochesterSubway.com says:

    October 10, 2012 at 11:29 am

    @Richard, sorry about that, our comments crossed each other. So you’re saying you actually the shot the photos of Jay Golden shown here? Did you take any of the others?

    So to confirm, you say #11, #12, and #13 were from Loews?

17. Richard Neidich says:

    October 10, 2012 at 11:57 am

    yes, 11, 12 and 13 are Loews Rochester. The best way to see what I did take is to get a copy of the comemorative booklet. Russ Shaner has a set of images of the booklet. I have color slides as well, but have yet to get them scanned.

18. Beth Rhodes says:

    October 10, 2012 at 12:17 pm

    It just makes me SICK that we tore this down.

19. RochesterSubway.com says:

    October 10, 2012 at 12:39 pm

    @Beth, I spoke to Russ about this. He said that most of the furnishings, paintings, anything that wasn’t bolted down, was gradually removed from the theater by the theater’s management. Russ said he stumbled upon some of the furniture (including a table similar to this one) in an old mansion someplace in the southern tier that burned down in the 70’s.

    The one piece other than the organ that is still around is the information board – possibly the same one as shown here. It is in the Auditorium Theater.

20. Bob Williams says:

    October 10, 2012 at 8:28 pm

    I believe this is the booklet Richard references.

    http://www.scribd.com/doc/76481493/13WHAM-RKOPalace

21. Bob Williams says:

    October 10, 2012 at 8:40 pm

    “On its site will be erected a modern motel-office-theatre complex with twin eighteen story towers. The new 1200-seat theatre will be in the luxury class with the latest projection and sound equipment plus roomy seats that offer patrons ‘living room comfort.'”

    Oh right. Because the Palace wasn’t luxury class. Sometimes I wish I could go back in time to the 60’s (which I wasn’t around for, thankfully) and punch everybody in the face.

    Recalling all of the pictures I’ve seen this week, I almost feel the writing was on the wall for the RKO from the very beginning. From the time it opened, that corner lot was a parking lot according to the plats. The reason you layout a theater the way the RKO was oriented on the block with a long ‘lobby’ is because the Clinton Avenue streetfront is DENSE. Ironically that lot previously housed the Masonic Temple and Auditorium. This would move to Main Street and eventually receive the sizable donation of a Wurlitzer!

    See the Canon Theater in Toronto for an example of how this is still employed in context.

22. Douglas A. Fisher says:

    August 22, 2013 at 12:48 am

    The “planned” new apartment complex was to be called the “Voyager Towers” built by Wilmorite, which was heavily involved in 1960s urban “renewal” in downtown Rochester.

    The concept of “inner” and “outer” lobbies relates to intermissions, when the entire show could be many hours long. Having an inner lobby accessible only to paying patrons would render it difficult for gate crashers to enter the theater by mingling with the crowd during intermission. The non-paying would-be gate crashers would be restricted to the outer lobby.

    Danny Schultz, who provided many of these photographs, lived in Fishers, N.Y. He rescued the theater organ from the Paramount Theater, also on Clinton Avenue, between the RKO Palace Theater and Main Street. He installed this organ in his Fishers home. When he moved to Florida, the Paramount organ was then installed in the Eisenhart Auditorium of the Rochester Museum & Science Center, where it is still used for occasional concerts.

23. Danny Schultz says:

    August 26, 2014 at 6:59 pm

    Great to see these photos which came from several sources. Some were given to me by Frank Landkamp the last Manager at the Palace. Others were mine as I daily while working at B&L would at lunch document the theaters’ destruction. Richard Neidich and Dan O’Toole both RIT students made some of the highest large format photos. I have still a collection of 35mm slides which I made during the organ disassembly and removal as well as some shot in B&W with my Rolleiflex. I plan to bring my photo album to Rochester in Oct for interested parties to see.
    A correction to the location of the Paramount organ which I purchased from the UofR and with three sons approaching college age we sold it to a Pizza Parlor in Louisville CO where I witnessed it playing several years later. I and Bob Branch also removed the Organ from the Webster theater organ and parted it out due to it’s poor condition. The organ in the Museum came from Wooster, MA and I had little to do with it’s acquisition or moving, only along with Gail Smith and others helped finance it’s acquisition and storage in Webster for several years.

24. RochesterSubway.com says:

    August 26, 2014 at 9:38 pm

    @Danny, thanks for the information and correction. Terrific photos! Thank you for having the forethought to capture the demolition for us.

25. Jannette Zigadlo says:

    September 15, 2014 at 8:52 pm

    I remember so well as a child walking into these beautiful theaters, the Lowes, the Palace, the Paramount for movies of the day. I thought I was walking into a king’s palace so beautiful. Never stopped being in awe of these gracious structures along with the beautiful Sibley building. Met my daughter there under the “clock” for the last time on the last day before it closed. Wow,thanks for the great photos and memories.

26. Richard Neidich says:

    September 15, 2014 at 10:28 pm

    Additional photos from this period are being posted on the RTOS website. (See RKO Legacy menu choice) They are celebrating their 50th Anniversary this year with a weekend long celebration October 3-5, 2014.

27. Ruth Nederlk says:

    November 19, 2014 at 8:30 am

    I was delighted to see these pictures that I always have had in my memory. This was the most beautiful show in Rochester. It was a special treat to go there with my grandmother when growing up and I continued into my teens and then with my son when he was little. I felt a special fondness for the Palace. It was so beautiful with it chandlers . Even the lady’s lounge made you feel special when you went into this elaborate room with mirrors all around and upholstered chairs and lounges to rest if you wanted. This was special in our day in the 30’s and 40’s Today’s generation could never appreciate it like we did. I don’ need pictures although I enjoy them The Palace is imbedded in my mind

28. Donald J Van Epps says:

    June 12, 2015 at 11:31 pm

    Do you remember the Embassy theater on W Main? That was for “girly” shows. Or the Temple theater on N Clinton, for vaudeville.

29. Douglas A. Fisher says:

    June 14, 2015 at 6:15 pm

    The Embassy Theater was the final operating incarnation of the Cook’s Opera House on the west side of South Avenue, just south of East Main Street.

    The Cook’s Opera House was constructed in 1891 on the site of Rochester’s first theater. As a musical and vaudeville venue, it continued as the Family Theater when the Fenyvessy family purchased it in 1913. Its final phase, as the Embassy Theater, ended in 1955.

    Many famous persons played the stage there, including Lily Langtry (the “Jersey Lily”) and Milton Berle.

    Eons ago I worked quite hard to save this fine theater, with its excellent acoustics. A grant I obtained from the National Trust for Historic Preservation funded a study by nationally-noted theater preservation architect Giorgio Cavaglieri, which found that this opera house could be wonderfully restored as a 1,500-seat venue for approximately $2 million, a small fraction of theater costs quoted for a new theater in 2015.

    Historic preservation tax credits were unavailable then, which would have been academic since City Hall blocked its designation as a landmark.

    Federal urban “renewal” funds were available for demolition, but NOT for historic preservation. So City Hall used its federal urban renewal monies to purchase and demolish the theater complex.

    Although this was only one theater that could have contributed to revitalizing downtown Rochester, it was joined in demolition in that era by the loss also of the Regent Theater, the Paramount Theater, the Capitol Theater, the Loew’s Theater and, of course, the stellar RKO Palace Theater.

    At the time, common knowledge held that downtown Rochester would still do just fine, thank you, with all the federal millions that paid for the Inner Loop and other wholesale landscape remakings. History informs us otherwise.

30. Diane Tulley says:

    June 17, 2015 at 1:24 am

    I remember these movie houses so well, loved the RKO best of the best, cried when they tore it down. Its grandness and glory thrilled me then and now. I was appalled that they never built anything to justify the teardown. Is the transit mall really going to happen? Feels a little out of the way, too far north. I haven’t lived in Rochester for years (Calilfornia dreamin!) but was back 3 years ago, always so depressed at how downtown has lost its mojo, now Midtown and its wonderful clock (which I saw working the very first time its doors opened! I’m so glad the clock was saved!) no longer a draw downtown. Newer is not always better, restoration instead of teardown. Thank you for all the wonderful photos, comments, and memories!

31. Thomas Barker says:

    January 23, 2016 at 11:50 pm

    I made a movie of the last night at the RKO Palace.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KhKIY934C8

32. Mary Newton Meier says:

    January 30, 2016 at 11:05 am

    I cannot beleive what a wonderful article and picture that have been captured, so many childhood memories of the beautiful old theater, the charm, elegance of a time gone by! I have longed for years for pictures like this as you try to explain to others who were too young to know this. Thank you so very much

33. Jose Olivieri Rivera says:

    March 14, 2017 at 8:54 pm

    as a teenager i used to do handy work at some of the Martina Theaters, RKO,Paramount, and Waring…there are underground tunnels that run from one side of Main street to the other…near the corners of E. Main and N Clinton….under Main street there were storage areas where the old bell hop uniforms and theater paraphernalia was stored…velvet seats…old movie posters etc…i am talking circa 1964…a virtual memorabilia museum….it boggles my mind…who would destroy the RKO…the incredible architecture…rivaling that of many ny city theaters…and what happened to all of the curtains,,,chandeliers…wood work..furnishings etc…what a loss… what stupidity….

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