Rio Theatre

313 Main Street,
Rockport, IN 47635

Unfavorite No one has favorited this theater yet

Showing 1 comment

SethG
SethG on December 22, 2020 at 5:26 pm

Assuming it’s the theater on the 1917 Sanborn, the address was 313 Main St, and this was long ago demolished, along with about 2/3 of downtown.

The building was typical of older commercial buildings, being very deep and narrow, but was rather unusual in being four stories tall at the front, then about 25% of the way back dropping to two stories, then for the last 1/3 being only one story. It was of brick construction with a wood and tin facade.

The building first appears on the 1892 map (the lot is vacant in 1885) as a stationery store. By 1909, it is shown as an ‘Electric Theatre’. Aside from the further addition of a one story wooden shed housing a gasoline engine, no great changes seem to have been involved in the conversion to a theater.

The building was gone at least as early as 2007, but probably quite a few years before that.