Demolition crews began tearing into the crumbling shell of the 1829 Rialto Theater building on Mathewson Street in downtown Providence this week, marking the start of demolition on a structure that started out as a church, became one of the city's grandest vaudeville houses, and spent its final decade as a half-vacant eyesore. The emergency teardown at 119 Mathewson Street got underway by Monday, and the lot may be transferred to a nearby hotel for parking once it is leveled.
The building's owner, Paolino Properties, bought the property in 2019 for $780,000, according to The Providence Journal. Providence officials approved the emergency demolition last month after touring the building, per the Journal's report.
Inspectors Found Serious Safety Problems
City officials who inspected the property found standing water in the basement, a deteriorated roof, unstable walls, and masonry at risk of falling onto the sidewalk below, the Journal reported. An emergency committee concluded the building posed an unsafe and imminent public safety hazard.
Before the wrecking began, the building housed the Dragon 2000 restaurant and a boarded-up newsstand; the storefronts were mostly vacant when the property was purchased in 2019. The Providence Preservation Society had already flagged the building's decline years earlier, placing 119-121 Mathewson Street on its 2019 Most Endangered Properties list, where it cited the structure's obsolescence and described it as a two-century architectural mishmash.
From Greek Revival Church to Vaudeville Palace
That mishmash had a long history. The building began in 1829 as the Westminster Congregational Church, a Greek Revival structure designed by James Bucklin and/or Russell Warren, per the Preservation Society's listing. It later became a vaudeville theater and briefly a skating rink, according to the Journal, before being remodeled as the Rialto Theatre in 1919 by William R. Walker & Son.
The theater's rear section was removed in the 1950s to make room for more parking spaces, the Journal reported — a detail that echoes the lot's likely next use nearly 70 years later.
A Conditional Deal With the Hotel Next Door
Paolino Properties has a conditional deal to transfer the lot to Hotel Providence, which sits next door to the Rialto site and around the corner from the Performing Arts Center, after the site is leveled. Hotel Providence has agreed to buy the lot for parking, the Journal reported.
Hotel Providence was sold to an independent ownership group over the summer, after Linchris Hotel Corp. operated the property for nearly 11 years; Hoodline reported that hotel investor Raj Patel purchased it in July 2026 for $10.25 million through Pramukh Hotel Providence RE LLC, the property's first change in ownership in 11 years. The hotel's general manager told the Journal he had no information about plans or future sales involving the Rialto lot.
The parking proposal comes amid a broader pattern in a downtown where parking already dominates the landscape. A Providence Eye op-ed in October cited an estimate that surface and structured parking lots occupy roughly 25 percent of downtown Providence's land area, attributing the figure to a 2023 Reddit post using ParkingReform.org data.
For now, the Rialto's fate is sealed even if the lot's future use is not. The building that once drew vaudeville crowds and later housed a Chinese restaurant and a shuttered newsstand is being cleared away under an emergency order after officials identified risks from falling masonry and a crumbling roof. The future of the cleared ground at 119 Mathewson Street remains uncertain.
