The Palace Theater opened to a crowd of more than its 1,000-seat capacity on Labor Day 1929, showing Spur’s first-ever “talkie” movie. In the decades since, in addition to films it has hosted everything from Easter Week church services, to beauty contests, to industrial conventions, to baccalaureates and graduations, to Santa snapshots, to Vaudeville shows to Vegas acts to video games.

Since 1994, its colorful blade sign with 366 incandescent bulbs has served as the city’s icon once again.

The theater in its heyday was described as “one of the handsomest and most modernly constructed within all of Western Texas.” The yellow-brick movie palace with its gracefully curved, lighted awning, second-story sash windows and barrel-tile roof details is evocative of the Spanish Renaissance–style architecture of Texas Tech University, and similar to other Palace movie houses of its day in Anson, Brady, Cisco, Paducah and elsewhere (cinematour.com).

Thanks to a grant from Humanities Texas—and the efforts of dedicated volunteers who have rescued and restored the 1929 movie theater in recent years— movie showings and live performances are back. Check Facebook for current events.