Rialto Square Theatre

The Rialto Square Theatre opened during the peak of America's picture-palace era — the roughly 1915-to-1930 window when major American cities and ambitious smaller towns commissioned increasingly extravagant movie-and-vaudeville theaters intended to function as 'palaces for the people.' The picture-palace concept was that movie audiences should experience a level of architectural grandeur normally reserved for European royalty: marble floors, gold-leafed plaster ornament, hand-cut crystal chandeliers, painted ceiling murals, ornate proscenium arches, and lobby spaces designed to evoke European cathedrals or Italian Renaissance villas.

Cornelius and George Rapp were the dominant American picture-palace architects of the era. Their Chicago firm designed roughly 400 theaters across the Midwest between 1906 and the early 1940s, including such surviving masterpieces as the Chicago Theatre, the Oriental Theatre, the Uptown Theatre (also in Chicago), and the Paramount Theatre in Aurora. Their Joliet commission for the Rialto was unusual in scale for a community of Joliet's size, but the brothers had developed a specific approach to combining cost-efficient construction with extravagant decorative surfaces — substantial concrete-and-steel structural shells finished with elaborately ornamented plasterwork, painted murals, and hand-detailed millwork.

The Rialto's design draws on a mix of Italian Renaissance, Byzantine, French Baroque, and Spanish revival decorative vocabularies — a deliberate stylistic eclecticism typical of Rapp and Rapp's work and broadly characteristic of 1920s American picture palaces. The building was constructed in roughly 18 months between late 1924 and the spring 1926 opening, with the interior ornamental work continuing nearly until the opening curtain.

Visitors enter the Rialto through the Esplanade, a long marble-floored gallery extending from the Chicago Street entrance back to the inner Rotunda. The Esplanade was designed as a processional space — modeled loosely on European palace galleries — and features columns, gilded plaster ornament, and a sequence of arched openings that create a deliberate visual rhythm as visitors approach the theater proper. The marble work is genuine imported Italian marble; the gold leaf throughout the Esplanade is real metallic leaf rather than paint, applied during the 1926 construction and partially restored in the late 20th century.

The Rotunda is the Rialto's signature interior space and the single feature that produces the strongest first impression for new visitors. It is a circular domed lobby modeled on the Pantheon in Rome, with a coffered dome ceiling roughly 60 feet across, a central crystal chandelier weighing approximately 6,000 pounds and reportedly the largest hand-cut crystal chandelier in the United States, and a circumferential gallery at the second-floor level. The dome is decorated with painted murals and elaborate plaster ornament; the floor is patterned marble; and the entire space functions as the social heart of the theater during intermissions and pre-show gatherings.

The auditorium itself seats approximately 1,920 in a configuration that combines orchestra-level seating, two balcony levels, and a small number of box seats along the side walls. The proscenium arch is one of the most elaborately decorated theater proscenia in the United States, featuring a vast field of gilded plaster ornament, painted detail, and sculptural elements that collectively form one of the most ambitious decorative surfaces of the entire 1920s picture-palace era. The auditorium ceiling features a massive painted mural and additional ornamental plasterwork.

The Rialto's most famous on-screen appearance comes in the 1980 John Landis film The Blues Brothers — the same film that opens with Jake (John Belushi) being released from the Old Joliet Prison just a few blocks south. The Rialto appears in several scenes including the sequence where Jake and Elwood pursue their 'mission from God' through Chicago and the surrounding region. Joliet itself functions almost as a character in The Blues Brothers; the city's name is woven throughout the film through 'Joliet Jake' Belushi's nickname, the prison opening, and various references throughout, and the Rialto is one of several Joliet locations that the production used.

Beyond The Blues Brothers, the Rialto has appeared in a range of other film and television productions over the decades. The theater has been used for various concert films and television specials, and its architectural grandeur makes it a natural choice for productions that need a historic American picture-palace setting. The theater's marketing materials and tour script reliably reference the Blues Brothers connection because it is the single film reference that draws the most visitor interest, and Joliet's broader tourism identity has been substantially shaped by the film's cultural longevity.

Visitors should not expect to see explicit Blues Brothers exhibits or staging inside the Rialto itself — the theater operates first as a working performing-arts venue, and its on-site interpretation focuses primarily on the building's architecture and 1926 design. For deeper Blues Brothers context, the Joliet Area Historical Museum & Route 66 Welcome Center at the old Union Station (about a mile north) covers the film's relationship to Joliet in substantially more depth.

Guided tours of the Rialto operate Tuesday and Saturday afternoons at 1:30 PM, lasting approximately 90 minutes and costing $15 per adult. The tours cover the Esplanade, the Rotunda, the auditorium, and (depending on the day's other bookings) the backstage area, the box-seat tier, the second-floor gallery, and sometimes the historic projection booth. Tour guides are typically Rialto staff or volunteer docents who know the building's history in depth and welcome questions about specific architectural details, the restoration history, and the Blues Brothers connection.

Reservations for the regular guided tour are recommended but not always required — walk-up tickets are usually available, though large groups and weekend Saturday tours during peak tourism months (April through October) can fill up. Group tours of 15 or more can be scheduled by appointment outside the regular Tuesday/Saturday window; the theater accommodates school groups, senior groups, and Route 66 travel clubs regularly during weekday mornings.

Catching an actual performance at the Rialto is a substantially different experience from the daytime tour. The theater hosts roughly 40-60 ticketed events per year — touring Broadway productions, concerts spanning rock, country, classical, and comedy, plus occasional film screenings (the Blues Brothers has been screened periodically). Performance ticket prices range from roughly $25 for smaller events to over $100 for marquee acts. The full performance calendar is published on rialtosquare.com and is the easiest way to plan a visit timed around a specific show.

The natural Joliet half-day plan combines the Rialto with the Old Joliet Prison (about a mile and a half north) and the Joliet Area Historical Museum & Route 66 Welcome Center at the old Union Station. The classic morning-to-afternoon sequence: arrive in Joliet from Chicago (40 miles northeast) around 10 AM, start with the Welcome Center for orientation and Blues Brothers context, drive a few minutes north to the Old Joliet Prison for a guided tour (the prison's tour schedule is the most variable so check ahead), have lunch at Rich & Creamy or one of the downtown Joliet restaurants, and end with the 1:30 PM Rialto tour on a Tuesday or Saturday.

For Route 66 travelers continuing south, the Rialto pairs naturally with the Gemini Giant in Wilmington (15 miles south) and the Launching Pad restaurant at the same location. A typical Day-1 Illinois Route 66 itinerary leaves Chicago in the morning, spends the late morning and early afternoon in Joliet (Rialto plus prison plus museum), and continues south through Wilmington toward Pontiac and Bloomington for an overnight stop. Travelers who can plan their itinerary around a Tuesday or Saturday afternoon will get the Rialto tour as a centerpiece of the Joliet stop; travelers passing through on other weekdays will need to settle for the exterior view and the lobby (which is sometimes accessible during box-office hours).

Photography inside the Rialto is generally permitted during tours but flash and tripods are sometimes restricted; photography during performances is not permitted. The Rotunda is the single most-photographed interior space and is best captured during the tour when the lighting is set for visitor viewing.