Hillcrest Theater

The whole neighborhood where the Hillcrest/Hippodrome theater is located has great potential. As it is now it is a botched up mess. Bury the power lines, fix up the great old buildings around there and do something with the big old schoolhouse up the street—at least tear off that ugly auto parts store in front of it. Maybe it could be turned into a youth hostel or something. The business that occupies the theater could be enticed to move somewhere else nearby and the theater restored to show cartoons and old newsreels and maybe old movies, even silent ones. I say turn the art and architecture majors from Penn State Behrend and Gannon loose on that neighborhood—anything they produce has got to be better than the mess that is there now. And turn that green area in front of the bank branch (whose architecture doesn’t go with the neighborhood BTW) into a park if nothing else. Dare to do something different, Erie!

Am not familiar with this theater in Erie, but certainly the Erie Playhouse which had another name years ago and the restored Warner Theater on State Street.