Rialto Theatre

West Coast Theatres’ 1925 Rialto Theatre opened along Route 66 (Fair Oaks Avenue) with a world premiere, "What Happened to Jones?," attended by the movie’s star and director. Designed by L.A. Smith, South Pasadena’s Moorish style picture palace featured 1,200 seats, a Wurlitzer organ-led orchestra, and vaudeville. Amid a 1970s campaign to prevent a redevelopment agency from replacing it with parking, it received local, state, and federal landmark designations; a preservation group, Friends of the Rialto, formed in 1983. After playing Spanish-language fare, the Rialto got a new operator, Landmark Theatres, in 1976. It showed arthouse films, classics, Oscar nominees, etc. until 2007. In 2017, a church moved into the ornate, intact showplace (which has appeared in numerous movies). The Friends nonprofit organization and the Rialto’s owners finished an exterior restoration in 2021.