Gateway Theater
119 Sixth Street,
Pittsburgh,
PA
15222
119 Sixth Street,
Pittsburgh,
PA
15222
7 people
favorited this theater
The Gateway Theater was located in downtown Pittsburgh in what is now the city’s Cultural District. It was built on the site of the Alvin Theater, and opened in 1938 as the J. P. Harris Theater, named after John P. Harris, who started the world’s first nickelodeon in Pittsburgh.
In 1961 the theater was bought by George and Ernest Stern, whose Associated Theaters chain also included the Fulton Theater, which was several doors away at 101 Sixth Street. They renamed the theater the Gateway Theatre. It underwent a remodeling in the Autumn of 1967 and was dark for several weeks.
In 1980 the theater closed and was remodeled into a health club called the City Club. The club was bought in 1999-2000 by the health club chain Bally’s, and it still operates as that today. But the front of the club is easily identifiable as a former movie theater.
Contributed by
Ron Miller
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Recent comments (view all 36 comments)
Friday The 13th was the last movie there.
According to information from THEATRE CATALOG 1948/49 the JP HARRIS Theatre was built on the site of the old Alvin Theatre.It opened in 1938 and the architects were John and Drew Eberson.
The Theater Catalog atmos cited in the previous comment was mistaken about the year the Harris Theatre was opened. The Project Index of the Wolfsonian’s Eberson Archives lists the project as “Alvin Theatre Building & Alterations” and gives the year as 1941. A 1938 opening for a theater on the site of the Alvin would flatly contradict the 1940 item in Boxoffice that I cited in an earlier comment, which said that the roof of the fifty-year-old Alvin Theatre in Pittsburgh partially collapsed that year.
I’m not sure how much of the 1941 theater building was new. The fact that the archives uses the word “alterations” suggests that at least part of the old structure must have survived. As only the auditorium roof had collapsed, it’s possible that only the auditorium interior was completely rebuilt, and the remainder of the structure was merely remodeled. The original walls of the auditorium might have been retained, as was often the case with theater rebuilding projects.
A 1900 biographical sketch of actor, playwright, and theatrical manager Charles Lindley Davis said that he built the Alvin Theatre in 1891. It was named for the title character in a play he wrote, produced, and starred in, “Alvin Joslin.”
The Alvin Theatre was listed in the 1897 edition of Julius Cahn’s Theatrical Guide as one of four major theaters in Pittsburgh. Cahn gave the seating capcity as 2000, so it was a bit smaller than the Harris. Most likely, Eberson’s design incorporated some or all of the Alvin’s large stage into the rebuilt auditorium (Cahn said the stage was 48 feet deep from the footlights to the back wall.)
B.F. Keith bought the Alvin Theatre in 1900 and made it part of his vaudeville circuit, according to Lynn Conner’s book “Pittsburgh in Stages: Two Hundred Years of Theater” (Google Books preview.) Conner also says that the house was renamed the Shubert Alvin Theatre in 1920, and became the Harris Alvin Theatre in 1934.
An advertisement for Philadelphia building contractors R.C. Ballinger & Co. in a 1907 edition of Sweet’s Catalog of Building Construction listed the Alvin Theatre among the projects the company had built, and said that the house was designed by an Indianapolis architectural firm called Reed Brothers. I’ve been unable to find any other references to that firm on the Internet. This biography of Indiana, Pennsylvania, architect Thomas R. Harley, who also operates the local Indiana Theater, says that at Carnegie-Mellon University he wrote his master’s thesis on the Alvin Theatre. Maybe he found out who the Reed Brothers were. Unfortunately, his thesis is not available on the Internet.
The Google Street views show the auditorium of the Gateway and the side walls look like 1940 vintage so I think it was completely rebuilt at that time. The theatres are really packed together there. If you walk south, you enter the former entrance of the Byham theatre, through the auditorium onto the stage, through the back wall, audiences at the Gateway would see you enter their venue from the left and continue through the right and then you’d end up entering the O'Reilly Theatre through the backstage wall,, up the auditorium aisle, out through the lobby, across the street and then the audience at Heinz Hall would see you walk through the right wall of the auditorium!
Mr. Harley is the curator of the Jimmy Stewart Museum in Indiana PA. In these times any donations to the Museum by those of us on Cinema Treasures would be greatly appreciated I’m sure. Thanks.
Tim Harley is the director of the Jimmy Stewart Museum. He does have a 200 seat theater that was donated by Universal that frequently shows Jimmy Stewart Movies the way they were meant to be seen.. Tom Harley is also from Indiana but apparently is no relation.
of course JAWS. We used to stand in the upstairs rehearsal hall of Heinz Hall and see the long, long lines that had snaked around the block onto Penn
A movie and then Zotis, the restaurant with the great Rueben sandwiches next door!
For years, The Gateway was always the theatre in Pittsburgh where the James Bond movies would premiere. I can remember sitting in the balcony the weekend “The Spy who Loved Me” opened in 1977. I remember hearing a story about how Cinemette anticipated huge business for the first Roger Moore 007 movie “Live and Let Die” in 1973. They booked the movie at both the Gateway AND the Fulton. However, they only had one print of the movie. The spaced the start times about a half hour apart. This was long enough so that the ushers could run reels between the two theatres. Keep in mind the projection booths were at the top of each balcony, and the trip was a long one from booth to booth. The ushers had to be relieved when the business died down after the first couple of weeks, and the feature was just shown at the Gateway.
The August 30, 1934, issue of The Pittsburgh Press printed a special five-page section devoted to the newly remodeled Harris Alvin Theatre. A scan at Google News begins at this link.