Rialto Theatre

417 Broadway Street,
Paducah, KY 42001

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Joe Vogel
Joe Vogel on October 9, 2012 at 6:22 pm

Here is information about the Kozy Theatre from the April 11, 1914, issue of The Moving Picture World:

“Rodney C. Davis and Rankin Kirkland, of Paducah, are having plans made by A. L. Lassiter & Brothers for a new moving picture house to be known as the Kozy Theater. The new house will he at 417 Broadway. The building will be two stories high, and constructed of white enamel, and ‘Hytex’ brick. The seating capacity will be five hundred. The vestibule, which will be sixteen feet in length, will have a mosaic floor. The auditorium will be 92.6 feet in length, and the flooring will be of concrete, covered with wood and battleship linoleum.”
Architect A. L. Lassiter also designed the Auditorium Theatre at Dawson Springs, Kentucky.

Joe Vogel
Joe Vogel on January 4, 2012 at 12:31 am

Given this theater’s location in the 400 block of Broadway Street, I’m almost certain that Rialto was a new name for the Kozy Theatre, which was operating in the 1910s.

The December 27, 1913, issue of The Moving Picture World said that Rodney C. Davis and Rankin Kirkland intended to raze Davis’s 240-seat Kozy Theatre at 417 Broadway Street early the next year and replace it with a 500-seat house on the same site. I’ve found the Kozy Theatre mentioned as late as 1918, and what was probably the same house mentioned as the Cozy Theatre as late as 1925.

In the 1910s, Paducah also had a house called the Star Theatre, at 426 Broadway Street, almost across the street from the Kozy.

Joe Vogel
Joe Vogel on October 26, 2011 at 5:20 pm

The Rialto has been demolished. It was located on the north side of the 400 block of Broadway Street, about mid-block. The site is now occupied by one end of a modern, two-story building housing an outfit called Four Rivers Behavioral Health.

The historic buildings to the east of the Rialto’s site are all still standing, though some have been considerably altered from the year (I’d guess around 1952) when this photo of Broadway Street, with the Rialto’s marquee at far left, appeared in Life magazine.