Eastland Mall Theatre
Route 30,
North Versailles,
PA
Route 30,
North Versailles,
PA
1 person
favorited this theater
Showing 1 - 25 of 29 comments found
I got a chance to view some of the photos on Flickr. Great shots.
Oh and I hate, hate, hate the new Cinema Treasures format. The old one was much faster and much easier!
I have some exterior shots (also of the mall) I took of the theater back in 2004 before it was demolished. Last year, my husband and I revisited the site and walked around. You’ll never believe what I found—a lonely little mosaic bathroom tile from the theater!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/fuzzyproductions/
I still live a few miles from the formaer Eastland Mall/Theater. As a kid, friends and I would walk to the mall to shoplift Playboy Magazines from the Thrift Drug Store. Also to see movies. First saw “Goldfinger” and “Fantastic Voyage” there (Raquel Welch still looks ‘Fantastic’).
My mother drove me, in our new 1968 Ford Country Squire station wagon, to see “2001: A Space Odyssey”.
Amazing photos.
Some pictures:
View link
View link
Re: The J. Evans Miller Collection of Cinerama Theater Plans: the collection includes plans for a number of theaters that were designed but never built; it is one of the interesting things about that collection because it reveals some aspects of Cinerama history that otherwise would not be known. For example, there are plans for the Vogue Theater in Cleveland (which would have been a conversion) but what actually happened was that Stanley-Warner decided not to convert the Vogue but build a new, purpose-built Cinerama house, which was built and called the Great Northern. I would bet that though the plans were drawn up to build the Eastland for Cinerama, they were not executed. Roland Lataille’s list of Cinerama theaters, which I have found to be very accurate, does not list the Eastland, so it is highly unlikely that it ever advertised any film shown there as being “in Cinerama,” though it might have shown a 70mm print of some the single strip titles.
As of July 2010, the former mall site remains empty. Also, the Benderson website no longer has Eastland listed on its portfolio, so I’m going to assume that they are no longer connected to the site.
Boxoffice of April 27, 1964, said that this theater was being designed for the Associated Theatres circuit by architects Liff & Justh. The finding aid for the J. Evan Miller Collection of Cinerama Theater Plans, which lists the Eastland, gives the firm’s name as Liff, Justh & Chetlin.
An obituary for Bernard J. Liff (he died in 2008) uses the plural “theaters” in listing the types of buildings he designed, but so far I’ve been able to find only one other theater project he was connected with. Boxoffice of December 23, 1974, said that he had been hired to design two cinemas for the downtown Pittsburg project called The Bank, which I guess would be the Bank Cinemas I & II.
A January 11, 1965, Boxoffice article about the opening of the Eastland (originally a single-screen house seating about 900) says that its projection room was equipped to run any process except three-strip Cinerama. It also says that the screen was only 40 feet wide, which seems rather small for even single-strip Cinerama, but as the house is included in the Miller collection I suppose it must have shown a Cinerama movie at least once.
Little more than a year after the opening of the Eastland, Boxoffice of January 17, 1966, said the the Eastland II was to be built adjacent to the original theater. The new auditorium was to have about 600 seats.
Rick, I just joined this site and can’t open the pics from pitt.edu
Do you still have those pics? One of the last movies I saw there was One Crazy Summer and it was in the Big theatre.
Old picture:
View link
Renewing link.
The cinema opened on Christmas Day, 1964 you can see the grand opening announcement on this page at View link
Nothing has been built on the site yet. The mall itself has been raized only within the past two years.
I haven’t been to this area in years. Have they done anything with the old Eastland Mall site?
The theater was owned and operated by Associated Theatres initially. Its two auditoriums contained 826 and 558 seats.
Does anyone have pictures of this theater? I went to it as a kid, and I would love to see some pics of it.
This theatre’s status should be changed to “Closed & Demolished”. I vaguely remember coming here as a kid. I think they showed kids matinees, but I’m not 100% sure on this. If it did close in 1993, then I wouldn’t have come here as an adult (I got my driver’s license that year).
The mall has been demolished (including the theater too)
I mistakenly put the comma in the link. Try www.benderson.com and if that doesn’t work, you can always type it in your browser.
Neither links work.
Old William Penn,
You don’t need to “cut and paste” the link. Just go to www.benderson.com, click on “portfolio” and follow the instructions to get to the Eastland.
There is a great aerial photo of the mall and the cinema is visible in the upper left of the mall (as indicated by the yellow line).
According to a web search, the entire complex is being shopped as a new office complex. You need to cut and paste this as one URL line to view:
http://www.benderson.com/html/portfolio/brochures
/Pennsylvania%20FLYERS/Eastland%20Centre%20PA_1.pdf
Rick, Bart
There are a couple of good links on the www.deadmalls.com site. These are to newspaper articles. They should answer many of your questions about the Eastland Mall.
The Jerry Lewis Cinema chain was a good idea that just never succeeded. You can read about it in the CINEMA TREASURES book. It’s a very worthwhile book.
I believe they want to transform the old mall into a hospital (that’s one rumor). I believe the theater is still there, but I haven’t been up that way since summer. I’ll have to go up and check to see.
I remember going there once on a rainy weeknight in about 1973-74. I believe at that time they were branded as a “Jerry Lewis cinema” but don’t hold me to it. It was a pretty bleak theatre as I remember, but then again the Eastland Mall was also pretty bleak. The mall was originally an open air shopping center that was enclosed after a fire in 1972-73? The three story Gimbels was the only thing worth going to, but by then the Monroeville Mall had been open for about 3 years and was much bigger and newer.
The whole complex is essentially abandoned and should be torn down.