# Rialto Theater

A 742-seat 1918 movie house on South 9th, now the intimate Tacoma City Theaters room for jazz, comedy and one-off bills.

Canonical URL: https://tacomairl.com/places/rialto-theater/
Section: places
Area: Downtown
Published: 2026-10-25
Last fact check: 2026-10-25
Status: Not marked closed; check official information
Location: Downtown, South 9th Street
Address: 310 S 9th St, Tacoma, WA, 98402, US
Price: Per show, priced by the promoter. The shared box office is at 901 Broadway.
Official information: https://www.tacomacitytheaters.org/about/history
Box office: Wednesday 12–4pm at 901 Broadway, with extended hours on performance days. The Rialto opens for ticketed performances.
Performances: Evening times vary by show. Check the venue calendar.

The Rialto opened in **September 1918** as a movie house, with **742 seats**. The venue's history says it was designed in the 1900s movie-house tradition, and explains the name: the Rialto in Venice was a covered bridge lined with shops, and "rialto" came to mean a plaza where ordinary people went for entertainment, as opposed to theatres and operas built for the wealthy.

That is a fair description of how it is used now. The Rialto is the smaller, looser of the Tacoma City Theaters rooms — jazz, comedy, tribute bills and one-night shows that would look lost in the [Pantages](https://tacomairl.com/places/pantages-theater/) next door.

## Tickets and doors

The Rialto shares the Tacoma City Theaters box office with the Pantages, so the in-person window is **Wednesdays, noon to 4pm, at 901 Broadway** — a block and a half from the Rialto's own doors on South 9th. Otherwise buy through the show's event page.

Doors open for ticketed performances only. There is no daytime lobby to wander into.

## Nearby

[Museum of Glass](https://tacomairl.com/places/museum-of-glass/) and the [Chihuly Bridge of Glass](https://tacomairl.com/places/chihuly-bridge-of-glass/) are downhill towards the water; [Tacoma Art Museum](https://tacomairl.com/places/tam/) is a few minutes up Pacific. For food and a drink before the show, [McMenamins Elks Temple](https://tacomairl.com/places/mcmenamins-elks-temple/) on Broadway is the closest thing to a pre-theatre plan, and [King's Books](https://tacomairl.com/places/kings-books/) is on the way.

The [Pantages Theater](https://tacomairl.com/places/pantages-theater/) page covers the difference between the two rooms, and our [rainy Sunday guide](https://tacomairl.com/guides/rainy-sunday/) is the daytime version of the same few blocks.

Image: https://tacomairl.com/images/rialto-theater.webp
Alt: The Rialto Theater's cream facade and rounded corner entrance under a green canopy, with a neon blade sign and marquee above the sidewalk on a sloping street.
Image credit: Photo: Visitor7
Image source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rialto_(Tacoma,_Washington).jpg
Image rights: CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)
Photo details: https://tacomairl.com/photo-details/rialto-theater/

## Sources

- [Tacoma City Theaters: Rialto history, 1918 date, 742 seats and name origin](https://www.tacomacitytheaters.org/about/history)
- [Tacoma City Theaters: box office location and hours](https://www.tacomacitytheaters.org/events/box-office)