Rialto Theatre
302 Court Street,
Pekin,
IL
61554
302 Court Street,
Pekin,
IL
61554
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The local paper has this as the Columbia Theatre from 1951 to 1953 which “Closed for the Summer” in early May of 1953 (see photos). That signage was there all the way to February 16, 1955 when it was torched and destroyed after a 93 week run. The venue was previously the Rialto Theatre and the Dreamland Theatre. (“Closed for the Summer” unfortunately had great runs at other Pekin and Peoria area theatres.)
The Dreamland Theatre had been renamed the Rialto by 1928, when operator L.J. Bennett was mentioned in the April 7 issue of The Film Daily. A booklet published for Pekin’s sesquicentennial says that the Rialto Theatre was destroyed by a fire in the 1950s.
According to a souvenir book published for Pekin’s centenary in 1949, the Rialto opened at 302 Court Street in 1906 as a nickelodeon called the Dreamland Theatre. The Rialto was still in operation in 1949, while two other movie houses that had opened the same year, the Vaudette at 24 S. Fourth Street and the Unique Theatre at 9 S. Capitol Street, were long gone. Two other vanished Pekin nickelodeons were the Court Theatre at 431 Court Street, and the Idlehour, no address given, but in 1949 its site was occupied by the telephone company’s building.
From what I’ve heard the rialto was the low budget theater In Pekin. My guess is they ran poverty row films from studios like Monogram and PRC (Producers Releasing Corporation).