Palace Boot Shop · History

Why collectors care

Palace Boot Shop was a downtown Houston custom and western store from 1919 to 2005. Collectors meet Hollywood client lists and later “Palace Boot Company” listings that still need interior marks and city before a caption.

Taxonomy here is manufacturing company / shop. Half the late pairs were handmade in house and half were name-brand stock, per the 2005 closing coverage. A Palace mark is shop provenance; it is not automatic proof of which hand lasted the pair.

Shop history

The Houston Chronicle (2005) and Midland Reporter-Telegram reprint record founder Steve Panos, a Greek immigrant who walked to Houston from Galveston with fifty cents, worked a shine stand outside the Rice Hotel, and opened Palace Boot in 1919. He moved to the long-running Prairie location near the Courthouse District in 1932. A 1946 Texas appellate case, Panos v. Foley Bros. Dry Goods, names Steve Panos doing business as Palace Boot Shop at 410–412 Fannin Street in the Stratford Hotel Building, an earlier downtown address.

Nephews Lakis Xydis and Steve Xydis, who grew up in Greece, later ran the shop. Steve designed; Lakis managed. A third brother stayed in Greece making shoes. Lakis told the Chronicle that if a boot was not perfect, Panos threw it in the garbage.

Closing coverage lists clients including John Wayne, Marlon Brando, Anthony Quinn, and Paul Newman. Newman ordered about two pairs a year, sometimes by phone, and preferred plain square-toed, low-heeled boots. Those names are reputation, not pair certificates. Custom prices in 2005 ran about $700 to $7,000.

The shop closed in 2005 after neighboring Christ Church Cathedral bought the block. Illume’s later Parker Boot Company profile (4 December 2021) records that Zephan Parker obtained antique Palace patterns from Steve Xydis after the close and built some pairs from those patterns. Parker is a later Houston bench, not a Palace continuation.