The Acca Temple Shrine commissioned the building in the mid-1920s, hiring Marcellus E. Wright Sr. - working with Charles M. Robinson and Charles Custer Robinson - to design what they wanted: a vast Moorish Revival auditorium that would advertise the Shriners' fraternal exotic fantasy at a glance. The tile work was contracted out to J. R. Ray of the Richmond Tile and Mosaic Works. The interior decoration went to J. Frank Jones of the Rambusch Decorating Company. The building opened in 1927 and was formally dedicated by the Shriners in 1928. The theater seats 3,565 people. The ballroom, separate from the main auditorium, holds 1,100 in 18,000 square feet of space. It was - and remains - one of the largest theatrical venues in Richmond, and certainly the most flamboyantly themed.

By 1940 the Shriners were in financial trouble and the City of Richmond bought the building. Much of the interior was converted to municipal use. The basement, in particular, became a strange parallel world: the Richmond Police Department opened office space, classrooms, a gymnasium, and a shooting range for the police academy. They also built a swimming pool down there, initially for officer training. Generations of Richmond cops learned to shoot, to grapple, and to swim in the cellars of a Moorish Revival theater. The pool would eventually fall into disuse, then get filled with concrete during the 2014 renovation. Many Richmonders of a certain age remember the basement for a different reason entirely: VCU used it as a class registration hall for years, holding the kind of in-person enrollment lines that everyone over forty can still describe.

The list of performers who have played the Altria reads like a museum exhibit on twentieth-century American popular music. Elvis Presley played the Mosque in 1956 and again in 1972 - the venue's most famous booking, with photographs and ticket stubs that collectors still chase. Jimi Hendrix played in 1968. Frank Sinatra came multiple times. The Grateful Dead, Bruce Springsteen, Loretta Lynn, B. B. King, the Supremes, Widespread Panic, Roy Buchanan, the comedian Bill Burr - all stood on the same stage. Broadway tours have brought Wicked, The Lion King, Les Miserables, and Cats through the venue. It is the largest venue in Richmond CenterStage's performing arts complex, and continues to host major touring productions year-round.

In 1995, after a yearlong restoration, the city dropped the name "Mosque" - a name that had become awkward as Richmonders better understood what an actual mosque was - and renamed it the Landmark Theater. Then in February 2014, after Altria Group (the Richmond-based tobacco company formerly known as Philip Morris) donated $10 million toward a major renovation, the building took its current name: the Altria Theater. The 2014 renovation was substantial. The swimming pool was filled in. The lobby was modernized. The auditorium itself was carefully restored, preserving the Moorish ornamental detail that makes the room recognizable from a single photograph. The theater continues to advertise its capacity as 3,565 seats and to book the kind of acts and Broadway shows that a hall of that size demands.

On the evening of June 6, 2023, the Altria hosted the graduation ceremony for Huguenot High School. The students walked across the stage, families clapped, the city's high school year ended the way it should. In the parking lot afterward, a shooting broke out. Seven people were shot. Two died, including 18-year-old Shawn Jackson, who had graduated from Huguenot that very night, and his stepfather, Lorenzo Smith, who had come to celebrate. The violence shocked Richmond - a high school graduation, a beloved venue, a celebration suddenly turned funeral. Police arrested 20-year-old Amari Pollard, who pled guilty to first-degree murder in early 2024 and received 43 years in prison with 18 years suspended. A second suspect was cleared and released. The shooting is a reminder of something easy to forget when describing a building's grand opening galas and rock concerts: theaters are places where ordinary lives meet, and ordinary loss can arrive on what should have been an unforgettable night.