Dome Theater
5135 Butler Street,
Pittsburgh,
PA
15201
5135 Butler Street,
Pittsburgh,
PA
15201
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Frederick E. Querner opened an airdome known as Querner’s Dome Theater on April 12, 1913. Querner’s musical skills were useful in the presentation of live music with the films played. By 1916 (and perhaps as early as 1914), it was called the Dome Theater still operated by Querner and enclosed operating year-round with a 220-seat auditorium. In 1925, Querner received permission for an addition to the theater. In 1929, it assumed that a refresh brought sound to the Dome to remain viable.
Querner was still going after converting to sound into the 1940s as the Dome Theater. Unfortunately, he passed away in 1942. The theater stayed in the family with his wife, Agnes, running it with her son and Dick Jochim into the 1950s. Its 40 year journey may have ended. The building has since been demolished and replaced by a parking lot.
(This has no connection to the Frederick Theater on Linden Avenue and, thus, is unrelated to the Harry S. Bair designs. Those designs date to January of 1917 for the Linden Ave. Frederick Theater.
This venue was simply called Querner’s Dome Theater, the Dome Motion Picture and, finally, the Dome Theater. And there are two listings for this theater on Cinema Treasures - one as the Dome and one as the Querner. Because this one has the correct neighborhood, I would think this entry should remain as the Dome Theater; aka Querner’s Dome Theater and aka Dome Motion Picture Theatre.)
I don’t know why I wrote 3137 as the bank’s address. The bank is at 5157 Butler, and the theater must have been at 5135. There is no 3100 block of Butler Street.
As near as I can figure, the site of Frederick (or Fredrick) Querner’s theater was either on the lot where there is now what looks like an annex to the Allegheny Valley Bank of Pittsburgh, or on the parking lot next to it. The theater was too narrow to have occupied the entire frontage of the bank building, which has a modern address of 3137 Butler Street.
Although the caption of the photo of the Frederick Theatre in the publication cited in my previous comment uses the long spelling of the name, there’s a possibility that the theater was actually called the Fredrick, without the second e. That’s the way Mr. Querner’s first name is spelled on this page, which cites the 1920 U.S. Census.
Unfortunately the photo doesn’t show the name on the building itself. An old advertisement for the theater would confirm the spelling one way or the other, if somebody could find one.
A facade photo and a floor plan of the Frederick Theatre appeared in the August, 1920, issue of the professional journal Architecture. It can bee seen online here, at the Internet Archive. The caption says that the Frederick was designed by Pittsburgh architect Harry S. Bair.