Tegu's Rialto Theatre

The Theatre Historical Society archive has the MGM Theatre Report for the Rialto; it’s Card # 596. But because of some bungling most of the information on the card is obscured. Someone took a new photo of the theater and pasted it on the card in such a way that the report data is covered over. The photo would have fit if they had cut off the lower part which shows only street pavement. But that was too much effort. The number of seats can be read (452 – but that had been crossed out).

This walking tour of Waterbury says that the Opera House, which later became the town’s first movie theater, was on the site now occupied by the American Legion post. The original building, built around 1890, burned down on December 27, 1985. The Legion post is at modern address 16 Stowe Street, so lots must have been renumbered at some point.

The Opera House in Waterbuty, Vermont, is on a list of theaters belonging to the American Motion Picture League that was published in the December 20, 1913, issue of The Moving Picture World.

The tour page also says that in the 1930s and 1940s the town’s second movie house was in the Minard Block, now occupied by the Stowe Street Emporium, at 23 Stowe. It’s almost directly across the street from the Legion Post, so I would guess that lots on that side of the street didn’t get renumbered. The page doesn’t give the second theater’s name (it doesn’t mention the name Rialto either) but the house must have been listed in the FDY during that period.

Opened on April 18, 1927 with an original capacity of 800 seats. The theater appears to be closed in 1957 due to an April 9, 1958 notice saying that the proposition of the city had a possibly chance on buying, renting, or leasing of the theater for school purposes.