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Opened August 20, 1924 — closed 1989
The candy maker's theatre: The Rialto Theatre at 2616 South Calhoun Street was built in 1924 for $150,000 by James Heliotes, who also operated a candy factory in Fort Wayne, and its grand opening came at 1 p.m. on August 20, 1924. With 700 seats it was one of the city's most popular neighborhood movie houses — a palace in miniature for the south side, close enough to its patrons to walk to. The Rialto showed neighborhood pictures for nearly six decades. In 1982 new local owners bought the theatre and reopened it as a pornographic movie house; that chapter ended with the theatre's closing in 1989, after more than sixty years.
The afterlife: The Rialto is the rare Fort Wayne theatre whose story continued after its last show. In 1990 the preservation group ARCH Inc. placed it on its Endangered Structures List; in 1993 the city named the Rialto a locally designated historic district; the state surveyed it for the Historic Theater Initiative and rated it Outstanding. In 2003 a local group, the Reclamation Project, bought the theatre intending a center for theatre, arts, and urban ministry; the plan never came to pass, and the building stood vacant for years — as of 2019 still empty. It has since been sold again, its new owner exploring restoration. The Rialto's shell survives on South Calhoun, the most intact of the neighborhood houses and the one preservation case among them still open.
Sources:
- ACGSI, Allen INGenWeb, Rialto Theatre page — the timeline from the News-Sentinel archives and Cinema Treasures: built for $150,000, the 700 seats, the August 20, 1924 grand opening, the 1982 purchase and pornographic reopening, the 1989 closing, the 1990 ARCH endangered listing, the 1993 local designation, the 2003 Reclamation Project purchase, and the building's later sale; James Heliotes as builder, from the Indiana DNR's Historic Theater Initiative feature; the Outstanding rating and survey number (IHSSI 003-215-34084).