Bozeman's Rialto donates seats to Rialto in Deer Lodge

By MICHAEL BECKER, Chronicle Staff Writer

The doors of downtown Bozeman's Rialto Theater opened once again on Sunday morning, admitting volunteers armed with ratchets and drills who removed 165 seats from the theater.

ERIK PETERSEN/CHRONICLE Volunteers from Deer Lodge carry seats out of the Bozeman Rialto Sunday morning. The seats will be used in the Deer Lodge theater, which is being rebuilt after a fire destroyed much of the historic building. The seats will travel to Deer Lodge, where they will furnish that community's own Rialto Theater, which is currently being rebuilt.

Six months ago, a fire nearly destroyed the original Rialto in Deer Lodge. The 700-seat theater, built in 1921, had just undergone $300,000 in renovations at the time of the blaze.

“Truly it was a mournful day, the day after the fire,” said Lee Jewell, a member of the nonprofit Rialto board. “Main Street was plain empty. People were in their homes, teary-eyed.”

Board president Steve Owens said the loss of the Rialto left a hole in Deer Lodge.

“It's the whole cultural center of the community,” Owens said in front of the Bozeman Rialto on Sunday morning as a dozen volunteers hauled rows of seats onto trailers.

After the fire, enough of the Rialto remained to keep it on the National Register of Historic Places, a listing it earned in 1998, and the theater board received more than $300,000 from insurance.

The cost to rebuild, however, was estimated at $3 million. So far, the group has raised roughly $900,000.

Looking to save money wherever possible, board members learned about the Rialto in Bozeman, which is waiting for renovations of its own.

Sue Doss, one of the Bozeman Rialto's owners, said Sunday that those renovations are stalled, pending talks with the City Commission. Construction on new retail and residential space in the building may begin in June, but one thing's certain, the building will no longer be a theater.

Doss said giving the seats to Deer Lodge was a matter of two group's needs that happened to agree.

“It seemed like a good cause,” she said.

Located 120 miles west of Bozeman, Deer Lodge is home to about 3,500 people. Nancy Sebena, who grew up in Deer Lodge and now lives in Bozeman, said the Rialto means something to everyone who lives there.

“That little community has kind of withered away,” she said. “The theater is the symbol of people in this small-town just sticking it out.”

The Rialto was the only theater in Deer Lodge. It served as a stage for school plays, political debates and other events, and on the weekends it showed cheap movies. It was a safe place for children and teens, and the community took great pride in it, Jewell said.

“We have a small community,” he said. “About all you can ask for is pride in an accomplishment.”

As of last week, the Rialto in Deer Lodge is still a skeleton. The trusses have been hoisted into place, and the roof will be finished in two weeks.

Owens and board member Ron Mjelde weren't sure when reconstruction would be totally finished. That will depend on donations, Mjelde said, but that won't stop the group from opening the doors of their new Rialto as soon as possible.

“Come hell or high water, it'll be open in a year and a half,” board member Ron Mjelde said. “We may not have the seats, we may not have the balcony done, but we'll have the doors open.”

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