Uptown Theatre (Chicago) in the context of Uptown, Chicago

A movie palace (or picture palace in the United Kingdom) is a large, elaborately decorated movie theater built from the 1910s to the 1940s. The late 1920s saw the peak of the movie palace, with hundreds opening every year between 1925 and 1930. With the rise of television in the 1950s, movie attendance dropped, while the rising popularity of large multiplex chains in the 1980s and 1990s signaled the obsolescence of single-screen theaters. Many movie palaces were razed or converted into multiple-screen venues or performing arts centers, though some have undergone restoration and reopened to the public as historic buildings.

There are three architectural design types of movie palaces: the classical-style movie palace, with opulent, luxurious architecture; the atmospheric theatre, which has an auditorium ceiling that resembles an open sky as a defining feature; and the Art Deco theaters that became popular in the 1930s.

C. W. & George L. Rapp, commonly known as Rapp & Rapp, was an American architectural firm famed for the design of movie palaces and other theatres. Active from 1906 to 1965 and based in Chicago, the office designed over 400 theatres, including the Chicago Theatre (1921), Bismarck Hotel and Theatre (1926) and Oriental Theater (1926) in Chicago, the Five Flags Center (1910) in Dubuque, Iowa and the Paramount Theatres in New York City (1926) and Aurora, Illinois (1931).

The named partners were brothers C. Ward Rapp (1860–1926) and George L. Rapp (1878–1941), sons of a builder and natives of Carbondale, Illinois. Their Chicago practice is not to be confused with the Trinidad, Colorado practice of their brothers Isaac H. Rapp (1854–1933) and William M. Rapp (1863–1920) or the notable Cincinnati architects George W. Rapp and Walter L. Rapp, to whom they were not related.