Ritz Theatre Downtown Talladega AL – an Art Deco Delight!

I am an Alabamian and an architectural historian; Vitrolite is a perfectly acceptable term to use for the glass panels on the Ritz Theater in Talladega. Carrara Glass is not an entirely accurate description for the panels on the Ritz Theater. Vitrolite is the term I use for the product, though not all of the glass panels we see and refer to as Vitrolite are technically Vitrolite, which was a trade name used by Libby-Owens-Ford Glass for their product. Pigmented Structural Glass or Vitreous Marble are other, non company specific names for Vitrolite.

Carrara Glass resembles marble much more than Vitrolite; it was popular for bathrooms since it did not absorb bacteria like real marble (which in the “good ole days” of architecture was used for bathroom floors, counters, stall dividers, wainscoting-like wall panels, and even bathtubs). After germ theory was discovered and accepted, people realized that porous marble all over bathrooms would absorb both water and whatever was in bathroom water, a fairly unhygenic thought. Carrara Glass was used as a marble substitute in bathrooms since it gives all the class of marble with the hygenic qualities of glass; it absorbs nothing. Both Carrara Glass and Vitrolite are made the same way; they simply have different appearences and, to a degree, different applications.