The Gillioz Theatre and the Palace Block

On a Saturday night in October of nineteen twenty-six, the Gillioz Theatre opened on East Park Central in downtown Springfield and immediately became the most glamorous room in the Ozarks. M.E.

Gillioz, a contractor who had made his money building roads and bridges, poured that money into a movie palace that could have stood in Kansas City or St. Louis without embarrassment. Spanish Colonial Revival architecture.

Ornate plasterwork. A marquee that lit the block. The Gillioz was built at the precise moment when the movie palace business was at its most theatrical, before the Depression stripped the gilt off the industry and before television emptied the theaters.

Springfield in nineteen twenty-six was a prosperous commercial city, a railroad hub, a regional center, and the Gillioz was the building that said so. The theater hosted films, vaudeville acts, and community events through the middle decades of the twentieth century before the familiar pattern set in: suburban competition, multiplex theaters, declining downtown foot traffic. The Gillioz closed and sat empty for years.

The restoration of the Gillioz, which ran from nineteen ninety to two thousand six, was one of the early projects that anchored Springfield's downtown revitalization. The plasterwork was painstakingly repaired. The marquee was rebuilt.

The lobby and auditorium were returned to their nineteen twenty-six appearance. The Gillioz reopened in two thousand six, eighty years after its first night, as a live performance venue. It is still operating.

On a good night, it still looks exactly like what it was built to be: the most glamorous room in the Ozarks.