Palace Life
Whether it be Jazzy blues, a talented local band or beautifully performed score by a youth choir, the feel-good sound of music cascading off the buildings on Main Street creates an ambiance that is hard to match. As an open air theater, the Palace creates a stage in the heart of downtown with an opportunity to foster and share music with all visitors of downtown, regardless in you are sitting the seats with you eyes on the stage or enjoying the echoing sounds as you move in and out of the shops. But it hasn’t always been that way.
Completed in May 1910, to replace the previous city hall and opera house building destroyed by fire on February 20, 1909, the building that later became the Palace Theatre was intended to serve multiple functions, including Municipal offices, public meeting rooms, private office lease space, performance venue and jail.
Pictures made available thanks to the Carnegie History Center
The City of Bryan leased the theater part of the building to private operators. In the 20’s it was used as a movie theater. Initially called the Colonial Theater, all performances were live for a couple of years until the installation of moving picture equipment. By 1925 the name had changed from the Colonial, to the Princess, to the Palace, back to the Colonial and finally back to the Palace. In 1926, Morris and Edna Schulman moved to town, purchased several existing theaters, and took over the lease of the Palace. By 1929, the City of Bryan had outgrown its offices in the building that housed the Palace, so the property was sold to the Schulman family and a new city hall, police and fire station built at the intersection of 27th Street and Regent Avenue. The last movie shown in the Palace was in the early 1980’s. By 1987, the building was the home of Stage Center, a local theatre group.
Late one Sunday afternoon in 1987 the roof of the building collapsed. By that time, business in downtown had declined to the point that property values were at an historic low. Deciding that it was financially unfeasible to invest in the property, the Schulman family donated the property to the City of Bryan in hopes that it could be cleaned up and repurposed to spark renewed interest in downtown. Unfortunately, at that time, the City of Bryan was operating on a very lean budget, and the funds to do anything but install a security fence around the site were unavailable.
In the early 90’s, the dilapidated building was used as the stage in Lyle Lovetts’ music video for This Old Porch. A song he and Robert Earl Keen wrote that recounts their time at Texas A&M including their frequent visits to downtown.
Picture From City of Bryan 
youtu.be/e0iXfnyAZhs
Three years after the collapse, in 1990, a grassroots group of Bryan citizens approached the City of Bryan with a plan to clean the site and raise money to repurpose the remaining parts of the structure as an outdoor performance space that hosts many events and can be rented by the public.
Pictures made available through the Downtown Bryan Association
A great spot for you and 450 of your favorite people to enjoy a concert, film releases, recitals, or whatever you can dream up! Do you have a favorite Palace memory?
Written by Katie Neason with the help & expertise of Randy Haynes
Wanting to know more about Downtown Bryan? Check out the 2018 State of Downtown Report.