Airport Theater
Pittsburgh,
PA
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Contributed by
Rick Aubrey
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Recent comments (view all 6 comments)
After watching a “Stuff That’s Gone” documentary on our PBS affiliate, this was in the old Pittsburgh International Airport, which has been since demolished.
I believe the theater survved through the 70s.
The Airport Theater at the now-razed Greater Pittsburgh International Airport was straight ahead as you entered the main entrance. It was the farthest destination inside the building through the main corridor. It was razed when the airport was greatly expanded in – what? – the late 1960s or early 1970s.
Like many drive-in theaters, the Airport Theater distributed weekly playbills, with the present attraction on the front cover and about three forthcoming movies advertised on Pages 2, 3 and 4.
I was always intrigued by the theater and went there once or twice
before it closed, notably for a re-release combination of Hitchcock’s “Marnie” and “The Birds.” (Normally the theater had played late-run single features, so this program was quite unusual.) Two major disadvantages of the Airport Theater: (1) You had to pay airport parking rates just to be on the premises, and (2) The cinema wasn’t nearly well enough insulated from the deafening noise of planes taking off just beyond the walls. – Ed Blank
Have any other airports in the United States ever had commercial moviehouses within them? Has any airport today such a theater? – Ed Blank
Can’t let the general public in now, too many security issues.
I’m sure you’re right, Ken, but I hadn’t considered that. The folks waiting to board planes and the folks waiting to pick up passengers from arriving planes are now divided in half, which in turn would splinter in two any potential audience for a commercially run moviehouse.
The theater was built in an airport that opened in the early 1950s when families could still drive to the airport to watch planes land and take off and maybe take in a movie as part of the experience of being in a then-ultra-modern facility. This building even housed one of the Pittsburgh area’s (temporarily)leading nightclubs, the Horizon Room. – Ed Blank
Renewing link.