A brief history of Penn Theater
Butler City Council voted Thursday night, Oct. 27, to demolish the Penn Theater on Main Street rather than try to repair it. Mikayla Torrence/Butler Eagle
- Designed by New York architect James E. Casale, construction on the Penn Theater by Miller & Dumbaugh began in September 1937 at a cost of $125,000.
- It was opened in 1938 as a venture of Paramount Theaters Service Corp., which managed several movie houses throughout Western Pennsylvania from its Altoona, Pa., headquarters.
- Built to seat 1,100 people, the building featured what was, at the time, state-of-the-art air conditioning that pushed air across cool well water below Main Street. The movies themselves were shown over a vaudevillian stage, which remained in the theater throughout its lifetime.
- The debut film, “Girl of the Golden West,” starring Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy, was a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios project set in the American frontier about a pioneer girl who falls in love with an outlaw.
- In the 1960s, a small black box theater was added upstairs, known simply as The Bantam.
- After several decades as Main Street’s movie palace, Penn Theater closed its doors in May 1991, as a result of Butler’s retail economy shifting away from Main Street downtown toward more suburban areas.
- The building was then closed in 2001, and has since been reopened briefly for occasional live music and other events. However, plans for necessary renovation and restoration were shelved due to the expense of completing them, and the theater closed once again.
- In 2009, the Butler Redevelopment Authority borrowed $290,000 from the Pittsburgh History and Landmarks foundation and bought the building — a loan they still have yet to pay off.
Sources: Butler County Historical and Penn Theater Performance Company websites
