Liberty Theater
6237 Penn Avenue,
Pittsburgh,
PA
15206
6237 Penn Avenue,
Pittsburgh,
PA
15206
1 person
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This is the Liberty Theater in the East Liberty section of Pittsburgh, and not to be confused with a theater of the same name which was located on Liberty Avenue downtown. From an old photo I saw, this looked to have been a large place.
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jrs99cinefile
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Recent comments (view all 6 comments)
A Kimball theater organ was installed in the Liberty Theater in 1928.
Renewing link.
A September 20, 1965, Boxoffice item said that the Liberty Theatre “…folded last week and was dismantled.” Dismantled, in Boxoffice jargon, usually means all the seats and equipment were removed. The item said the house had been built fifty years earlier, for the Rowland and Clark circuit, but was later sold to Warner Bros. and then operated by Stanley Warner before being sold to its last operator, Associated Theatres. The local redevelopment authority had bought the Liberty from Associated.
The Arcadia Press book “Pittsburgh’s East Liberty Valley” says the Liberty was demolished in 1968. There’s a photo dated 1915, which was probably the opening year, and the caption names Henry Hornbostel as the architect.
I’m surprised to learn that Hornbostel designed a theater— he’s best known for his grand Beaux Arts projects such as the original plans for Carnegie-Mellon University, and some two dozen of his buildings are on the National Register of Historic Places. It’s too bad that what was probably the only commercial theater he designed has been demolished.
Joe, That Boxoffice issue errs on at least one major point. For most of the years of its existence, the Liberty was part of the John P. Harris chain, which included the Harris (Downtown), the South Hills (Dormont), the Denis (Mt. Lebanon) and the Perry (Perrysville).
Here is a 1919 photo of the Liberty Theatre on Penn Avenue.
In an item in the January 5, 1914, issue of the journal American Stone Trade, architect Henry Hornbostle, to whom two sources that I know of attribute the design of the Liberty, was said to have “approved” the plans of the Schenley Theatre, a project designed by the architectural firm of H.E. Kennedy & Company.
On the Sheridan Square Theatre page, a comment by Denis McNamara (probably this architectural historian, by the way) says that architect Edward J. Schulte, who was working in Kennedy’s firm during the period when these theaters were built, listed the Sheridan Square, Schenley, and Liberty on his resume.
Despite the source I cited in my earlier comment above, and the book about Hornbostel reviewed here, I’m now wondering what roles Hornbostel and Schulte each played in the design of the Liberty. Unfortunately, there is much more information about the Schenley than the Liberty on the Internet, so I’ve been unable to track down any references from the 1910s that would confirm Schulte’s involvement in the project.
I’ve found nothing published prior to 2002 that mentions Hornbostel in connection with the Liberty, either, and I still find it odd that so restrained a classicist as Horbostel would have designed a theater that, as described by the book review to which I linked, featured “…white, glazed terra cotta tiles framing an American flag composed of red, white and blue light bulbs.”