Two Palaces on Two Rivers: The Paramount and the Rialto Refuse to Fade

They don't build them like this anymore, and honestly, they barely built them like this then. Within a five-year stretch in the mid-1920s and early '30s, two of the great American movie palaces went up not in some glittering big-city core but out here — one on the Fox River in Aurora, one in downtown Joliet. A century later, both are still standing, still lit, and still, on the right night, capable of making a crowd gasp when the house lights dim.

Start in Joliet, at the Rialto Square Theatre, the self-proclaimed "Jewel of Joliet." It opened May 24, 1926, designed by the great theater architects C.W. and George Rapp in an unapologetic Neo-Baroque style. The showpiece is the rotunda: a celestial dome and scagliola columns crowned by the "Duchess" chandelier, with black-marble elements modeled on the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles. That is not a metaphor. Someone in 1926 looked at Louis XIV's Versailles and decided Joliet, Illinois, should have a version. It seats 1,966, and walking in still feels like trespassing into a wealthier century.

Twelve miles northwest, on Stolp Island in the Fox River, the Paramount Theatre opened in September 1931 — also a Rapp and Rapp design (C.W. and George Leslie Rapp), this time in Art Deco with Venetian flourishes. Its best trivia is genuinely great: the Paramount was the first air-conditioned building built outside of Chicago. In the pit of the Depression, Aurora got climate control before almost anyone. The house has been trimmed slightly over the years — original capacity 2,125, now 1,843 — and it landed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980, anchoring Aurora's Stolp Island Historic District.

Here is where their present-day paths diverge, and it's instructive. The Paramount is a machine. It runs a full producing operation, and it has quietly built an entire campus around itself: directly across E. Galena Blvd. sits the Copley Theatre, its intimate sister house, reborn after a $2 million, two-year renovation into a modern 165-seat black-box room with a contemporary lobby bar, home to the Paramount's edgier "BOLD Series" and, as of 2026, a new Copley Comedy Series. The Paramount organization also programs RiverEdge Park down the street. One historic theater, an entire ecosystem.

The Rialto, by contrast, is having a quieter summer. Check its calendar for July and August 2026 and you'll find no concert listings — the Jewel of Joliet appears to be dark through the hot months, with bookings resuming in the fall. That's not a scandal; historic single-houses often go quiet in summer when the touring calendar thins and there's no air-conditioning arms race to win anymore. But the contrast is real. One palace turned itself into a year-round institution with satellites and side rooms. The other remains a stunning special-occasion room that lights up when the right tour comes calling.

Why does any of this matter in 2026? Because these buildings are the argument that the suburbs were never a cultural afterthought — they just spent a few decades acting like one. When a developer tells you great rooms only get built downtown, point them at a Versailles chandelier in Joliet and a Depression-era air conditioner in Aurora. The bones were always here. The trick, as the Paramount keeps proving and the Rialto still could, is refusing to let them turn into museums.

Go see one before you see the other. Then argue with your friends about which crown wins.

Sources: Wikipedia — Paramount Theatre (Aurora)); Wikipedia — Rialto Square Theatre; Patch — Aurora Copley Theatre renovation complete