On January 1, 1914, I. W. Maple put a small ad in the Ridgeway Journal that his new theater was nearly finished and would be opening on January 20 with a production by the Leonard Players. The theater was a brick building on the west side of Main Street between Pine and Cedar just north of the building where R & T’s thrift shop was formerly located. The building took up the entire lot with the stage at the west end and the box office on the east as you came in from Main Street.
Maple ran the theater himself until 1923 when he leased it to E. W. Johnson in 1923 and John McCrary in 1924. He had opened a new theater in Albany and moved there to manage it. The theater operated as the Rex until 1929 when it was purchased by Bill Leonard of the Leonard Players. He installed a new projector and renamed the theater to Ridgeway Community Theater. But in 1932, the building was acquired by the Ridgeway Building & Loan. Under the management of Dean Leazenby, mayor of Ridgeway, the theater was completely renovated with all new sound equipment and reopened as the Palace Theatre.
The Palace offered all the newest “talkies” for Ridgeway’s entertainment and continued to provide space for community events as well. They hosted Missouri Public Service’s “Electric Cookery School” for families who had purchased the new-fangled electric ranges and wanted to learn to use them and “Instruction by Moving Pictures” courses for agriculture. The theater remained open until at least the 1950s when it stopped being mentioned in any of the Harrison County papers.
The building was torn down decades ago and I have no pictures of it to share, but if you have some or know of someone who does and is willing to share, please let me know.
