The Palace Theatre holds a prestigious legacy, having welcomed dignitaries and celebrities such as the Dalai Lama, Ella Fitzgerald, The Beach Boys, Wayne Newton, Tom Jones, George Carlin, Bernadette Peters, “Weird Al” Yankovic, Wiz Khalifa, the Jonas Brothers, Kenny Rogers, and Blue Man Group, among others.
Originally opened on September 2, 1926, as the Manos Theatre, a vaudeville and silent movie venue, the historic Palace Theatre now hosts the widest variety of live entertainment and concerts in the Laurel Highlands region. This beautifully renovated facility features 1,367 seats and is located across from the Westmoreland County Courthouse at 21 W. Otterman Street in downtown Greensburg. The Palace Theatre is proudly owned and managed by Westmoreland Cultural Trust.
The Palace Theatre opened on September 2, 1926, as the Manos Theatre, the crown jewel in a string of the Manos family’s vaudeville-movie houses in the region. Built at the then-extravagant sum of $750,000, the Manos was considered the area’s finest theatre. Westmoreland Cultural Trust is proud to say that it still is! From concerts and comedy to theatre, dance, family entertainment, and more, The Palace entertains more than 75,000 patrons at 100+ events each year.
Greensburg in the 1920s – as today – was Westmoreland County’s center of business and cultural activity and supported many theatres throughout the early 1900s. The biggest and most elegant of all was the Manos Theatre, constructed on the site of the smaller Rialto Theatre. Originally seating 2,136, the Manos Theatre provided the community with daily doses of vaudeville, silent motion pictures, and road shows, accompanied by a magnificent Wurlitzer organ. A dome of red, blue, and green lights high in the theatre’s ceiling would blink and flash to the music, similar to effects seen in today’s roller rinks.
Only venues in larger cities could match the elegance of the Manos Theatre. Its French Renaissance design boasted a golden Grecian marble balustrade and trim, an elegant Vermont marble staircase, brass railings, colorful murals, black and white checkerboard tile floors, wrought copper and iron hanging baskets for flowers, and a flowing fountain with live goldfish. Below the Manos Theatre was a bowling alley, billiard parlor, and a production facility that turned out newsreels of current events to play on the theatre’s movie screen before the show. The Manos was a spectacular place to visit and quite the place to be for superb entertainment. Lines at the Box Office on show days would often extend up the block to Main Street.