The Palace Theatre Albany

Opened in 1931 as an RKO movie palace — the third-largest movie theatre in the world at the time — the Palace is the grand 2,800-seat room at the top of downtown Albany, and the sole survivor of the city's era of opulent movie houses. John Eberson designed it in ornate Austrian Baroque, and most of that survives: the brass chandelier in the main lobby, the Karoly and Szanto murals, the fore-lobby plaster beams painted to resemble carved wood. Run since 1984 by the nonprofit Palace Performing Arts Center, it is the Capital Region's busiest touring house and home to the Albany Symphony Orchestra, with a calendar that runs from rock and hip-hop through ballet, orchestral film scores, free movie screenings and family programming. Standup arrives at headliner scale — Jeff Dunham, Jo Koy, Jerry Seinfeld and Matt Mathews are all on the current book. Doors open an hour before showtime, and the box office is two doors up from the main entrance at 19 Clinton Avenue.