Final Curtain

The face of Villisca’s downtown has seen a permanent change.
Contractors last week began the process of demolishing the former Rialto Theater, The Lounge, and the former Honeyman buildings. The main demolition occurred Aug. 7, and all of the buildings were leveled by that afternoon.
Villisca City Council member and Rialto Theater Board President Tripp Narup said while the demolition is moved quickly, there’s much more to do once the buildings have been removed to begin the next phase.
“We’re going to have to apply for a grant, and we already have a rough draft of what we’re going to do. We’re going to have a covered farmers market on the south side of the three lots and an outdoor performance space on the north side. The rest will include a park-like seating area,” Narup said.
While there are plans for the future, Narup said watching iconic pieces of Villisca’s history come down has been bittersweet.
“It has been tough. Pat Shipley spent 30 years putting shows on in the Rialto. The Rialto also has a Facebook page, and there have been a lot of comments. There are a lot of memories tied up in these buildings. In fact, someone shared a memory of Honeyman’s Drug Store, and they shared that the drug store used to make the best cherry Cokes around,” commented Narup. “It’s not just the memories of the Rialto people are sharing, they’re sharing the memories from those other buildings as well.”
Narup said the demolition work drew some onlookers, including him, to the site.
“We’ve had handfuls of people. I thought there might be even more than have been. There’s been about five people, including myself, going around and taking pictures. It’s not every day you see a two-story wall coming down all at once.  Watching the demolition of the Rialto has been the most dramatic. If all the buildings, it looked like it was in the best shape, but in effect, structurally, it was severely compromised,” Narup explained. “The contractors got maybe a quarter of the front wall off and the whole thing came down. As for the back wall, that only got a nudge, and it all came down. Honestly, the back wall was our biggest worry with that building. When we had a structural engineer take a look at it a couple of years ago, he took one look at the wall and wasn’t even sure why it was still standing. We were lucky that no one got hurt and it didn’t fall prematurely.”
While the decision to demolish was hard, it was not a decision that was taken lightly, and much was done to try and save the Rialto.
“We did start out with the idea that we were going to save the Rialto and restore it. But the more we got into it, the worse things got.”
Efforts to save the building got as far as the community supporting the restoration.
“We cleaned it all out. There were a ton of old costumes and props that had to be thrown out. The whole balcony was stuffed with it. Joe Cooney hauled out maybe six to eight trucks of the stuff that were loaded by volunteers, and I was one of them. We were bagging up and throwing away. We spent about $8,000  putting in a new electrical line so we could be able to have lights in there and see to work. That was when we realized we didn’t know enough about restoration to do it piecemeal,” advised Narup.
From there, architect Pete Franks was hired to give the city a restoration plan. He looked at the building and urged the community to seek the guidance of the structural engineer.
“Pete and the engineer spent a day crawling through places in the bulding I’d never have considered going. After they were done, they told us that it was going to cost the city $850,000 just to keep it from falling in. That’s when we knew we were sunk. We couldn’t raise that kind of money just for the structural improvements to the building, to say nothing of the restoration costs themselves. That was an extremely hard bit of news. Especially for those that had spent decades putting on shows at the Rialto,” said Narup.
In its heyday, the Rialto showed movies and produced major musicals such as “Guys and Dolls” and “Camelot.” The building was originally a mercantile building but was converted to a theater in 1930. The last production at the Rialto was in 2017 when the local high school produced “Don’t Drink the Water.” The last community production was “”The Spitfire Grill” in 2006.
“They were doing full-blown musicals. They’d have a small orchestra up in the balcony and a cast of thousands. It’s amazing to me that they were able to do those shows, and they did one every summer for nearly 30 years.”
While the Rialto has ceased to exist, a familiar piece of the historic structure will remain.
“We’ve saved the tall part of the marquee, which was the most interesting part. The base where the letters went was not architecturally all that interesting, as it was just a triangle. We figured we can rebuild the base easily enough, but we definitely knew we needed to save the tall part, because that’s where the Rialto letters were. The architect will be incorporating the tall part of the marquee into the design for the new performance space,” Narup commented.
Narup urged other rural communities that had historic buildings to make the effort now if they wished to save them.
“They should do something sooner rather than later. A lot of the buildings in this part of Iowa were built from around 1895 to 1910 or so. That was the big boom period. At this point a lot of the older buildings in our town are more than 100 years old. Commercially, a lot of them haven’t been viable for a long time,” Narup advised. “When that happens, the buildings wind up not being well taken care of. It’s the old adage. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Putting a simple patch on the roof may save a whole building from collapsing 20 years down the line.”
While improvement plans are on the way, Narup said they’re far off now, and the community is mourning the loss of a familiar portion of its downtown.
“All of the buildings had a history to them, and everyone who has lived in this community has memories of them. I certainly don’t blame them for being sorry to see all of that go. Once we get a final design and start fundraising and get a grant, I think there will be more excitement about what’s coming next.,” stated Narup.
Once the demolition has been completed, the bricks will all need to be separated. Narup said they’ll be repurposed on a farm.
“They will be taken to a farm up by Tenville to help with erosion control. The project has been cleared through the DNR, and so the bricks will be separated from the rubble. Jim Robinson is taking the brick and saving us a lot of the demolition costs. It’s about $40 per ton to dispose of it at a landfill.”
The City of Villisca received a $125,000 grant from the Iowa West Foundation to aid in the demolition of the buildings. Narup said the grant was instrumental in the demolition being possible, and they could not have done the project without it.
Pat Shipley commented via Facebook about her sadness over the Rialto being demolished.
“It seems odd to say I lost a friend today. The friend was actually a building packed with years of memories, cherished friendships, laughter, tears, building and painting sets, hard work, directing and performing on stage and working off-stage, singing, and learning theater skills from each other.
“It’s the building where my mom saw the ‘The Wizard of Oz,’ where I attended my first movie, and took my daughter to see her first movie.
“It was a place where families worked together on musicals and plays. Parents would get frustrated that our kids knew our lines and/or songs before we did.
“Today the building is being demolished because the structure and the buildings around it were unstable and beyond repair.
“Time goes on. Life changes. Communities change. Change brings sadness and it also provides opportunities and promises for hope and new direction.
“Today it’s good-bye my old friend, The Rialto Theatre. May the space become new with promise. It’s not work a small group can accomplish. It takes a community working together. I’m a bit sad today, but it’s tempered by hope,” Shipley said.