Gateway Theatre
119 6th Street,
Pittsburgh,
PA
15222
119 6th Street,
Pittsburgh,
PA
15222
7 people
favorited this theater
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Boxoffice, July 27, 1964: “Associated Theatres, which operated 35 theatres, has purchased the building at 119 Sixth Ave. which houses the Gateway, the circuit’s downtown flagship. This modern building on the site of the former Alvin Theatre was purchased for $325,000 from Harvard University … Harvard owned the building for many decades and in years past rented it to the former Harris Theatre interests. When Harris Amusements sold out to the Associated group, with Associated taking a long term lease, the name was changed from the J. P. Harris to the Gateway Theatre.”
reopening on August 30th, 1934
1931 photo as the Alvin added courtesy The Odd, Mysterious & Fascinating History of Pittsburgh Facebook page. Unique 40th Anniversary marquee added above the existing one. I calculated the year based on the 1891 opening.
SHAME ON THE CITY OF PITTSBURGH. Shame on them for allowing this beautiful theatre to go by the waste side. It should have been preserved and made into a live concert venue. The city is poorer for having destroyed it.
1952 photo as the Harris Theatre added to Photos Section, courtesy of Retrographer. (Link below) Copy courtesy of Jackson-Township historical preservation Facebook page.
A parade of cars traveling Sixth Street in Downtown Pittsburgh with signs bearing “Eisenhower-Man of the Hour” and “Tell Your Missus Don’t Vote for Hisses” supporting him in the 1952 Presidential Election. This view also includes the Fulton and Harris Theatres.
http://retrographer.org/
Grand opening as the Alvin Theatre was September 21, 1891 (ad in photos). It closed as the Gateway Theatre after a last showing of “Friday the 13th” on June 11, 1980. It’s final booking, “The Island” was moved to the Manor Theater.
April 4th, 1942 grand opening ad as J. P. Harris also in the photo section.
Grand opening ad as Gateway December 30th, 1960 in photo section.
Regarding this paragraph in my comment of December 5, 2010:
I don’t know why I didn’t think of this before, but “Reed Brothers” might have been an error by whoever put together the ad in Sweet’s Catalog. Before establishing their practice in San Francisco, that city’s noted theater architects James and Merritt Reid had operated an office in Evansville, Indiana, along with their younger brother Watson Reid. The Evansville office was sold in 1891, the same year the Alvin Theatre was built. The Reids then moved to California, though Watson eventually returned to their native Canada to practice architecture there.This is probably not enough information to establish that San Francisco’s Reid Brothers designed the Alvin Theatre, but, if the Sweet’s ad got both the name and the city wrong, it opens the tantalizing possibility that they did. It would be interesting if their first theater design turned out to have been in Pittsburgh, and not in that other hill town where they became famous.
I can remember seeing a “sneak preview” of “The Time Machine,” in 1960, at what was then called the J.P.Harris Theatre, along with the main scheduled feature, “Let’s Make Love,” which starred Marilyn Monroe, and which I thought was too dull for words. I was 11. But I loved “Time Machine” and still do! I seem to remember other films there, too, like “Journey to the Center of the Earth,” and “The Mysterious Island,” which usually appeared around the holidays.
I can remember seeing a “sneak preview” of “The Time Machine,” in 1960, at what was then called the J.P.Harris Theatre, along with the main scheduled feature, “Let’s Make Love,” which starred Marilyn Monroe, and which I thought was too dull for words. I was 11. But I loved “Time Machine” and still do! I seem to remember other films there, too, like “Journey to the Center of the Earth,” and “The Mysterious Island,” which usually appeared around the holidays.
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.
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.
A movie and then Zotis, the restaurant with the great Rueben sandwiches next door!
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
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
Friday The 13th was the last movie there.
establish/renew link
My parents were divorced and my father was the defensive coordinator of the Pittsburgh Steelers. We went to see JAWS there. The theater was a MOB scene. I also remember seeing THE THREE MUSKETEERS there too.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWXjFHqc7gc
Here is a 1979 photo:
http://tinyurl.com/cvh3zo
Renewing link.