Located at 161-169 Main Street in Danbury is the Martha Apartments/Palace Theater complex. Designed by architect Philip Sunderland, the Martha Apartments were erected in 1926. The third storefront from the south end on the building’s ground floor (165 Main Street) is the entrance to the Palace Theater, the fifth largest auditorium in Connecticut. The theater opened on September 6, 1928 as a vaudeville stage seating 1,999 (a way to avoid the law that a 2,000 seat theater had to join the union and pay extra fees). The Palace soon switched over to moving pictures. In 1979, it was converted into a triplex by the addition of partitions, and continued in business until 1995. In 2008, owner Joe DeSilva began to renovate the historic theater to become a venue for film and the performing arts.
