After an extensive, two-year renovation, the Hollywood Theater in Dormont is slated to reopen this fall.
Row House Cinema acquired the historic, soon-to-be century-old theater in September 2023 in a bid to expand its single-screen boutique movie house from Lawrenceville into the South Hills.
With the expansion, said Row House Cinemas principal Brian Mendelssohn, came ambitions of restoring the historic theater as a state-of-the-art movie house, a regional draw, and a “mainstay of Pittsburgh’s film scene.”
Following a three-month trial period in fall 2023 — where the Hollywood hosted Donnie Darko director Richard Kelly and the late singer Rebekah Del Rio — the theater has been closed for a $2 million renovation.
“We want this space to be more than just a movie theater,” Mendelssohn said during a recent preview tour. “Our vision is for it to be a truly unique destination, a communal experience, and, most importantly, a great night out.”
Mendelssohn and the Row House team offered a sneak peek of the ongoing work at the theater, where a team is “framing all day” and will soon install new theater seats. The theater’s grand opening is slated for Nov. 6.
“This is almost done, believe it or not,” Mendelssohn said. “It doesn’t look that way, but … you’ll start seeing all the cool elements are coming together.”
Rather than “build a box,” Mendelssohn explained, referring to a modern megaplex-style theater, the Row House creative team drew historical inspiration for the remodel, creating an ambitious plan to reestablish the cinema as an “atmospheric theater” that harkens back to movie palaces of the 1920s. When finished, the Art Deco-style theater will be a “permanent tribute” to Fritz Lang’s 1927 silent film Metropolis.
“We’re the first atmospheric theater that’s been built since 1989,” Mendelssohn said. “Nowhere in Western Pennsylvania is there one.”
Popularized in the 1920s, atmospheric theaters were designed to evoke a particular time and place, and incorporated architecture and decor to make moviegoers feel like they were outside. In their heyday, these glamorous “picture palaces” channeled 17th-century Dutch cityscape, Spanish courtyards, or Mediterranean skies, as with McKeesport’s John P. Harris Memorial Theatre (which closed in the 1970s), attracting Americans to the movies on a weekly basis.
In a case of what’s old is new again, when the lavish Hollywood Theater opened on Potomac Avenue in September 1926, it featured a courtyard interior, a balcony, and a domed ceiling with embedded star lights, even using the tagline “Where the moon and stars shine,” according to Row House’s research.
Through a partnership with Needs More Fog — an experiential design company launched by Scott Simmons, owner of the former haunted attraction ScareHouse — Row House will recreate some of the atmospheric theater’s original elements. The curved ceiling and a projected “sky-scape” will return to the 400-seat main theater (thus the marathon metal framing), along with faux facades and added “sci-fi scenery” à la Metropolis. Simmons said incorporating design elements from the black-and-white futuristic film is also a nod to the “industrial vibe of Pittsburgh.”
For its Nov. 6 grand opening celebration, Row House-Hollywood will screen Metropolis along with live musical accompaniment, light bites, and champagne. In the coming weeks, the theater will also soft launch programming for members of Row House’s film club, and has Halloween-themed public screenings in the works for October, including Night of the Living Dead.
At first glance, said Simmons, creating a haunted house and revamping the historic theater — a project he describes as Need More Fog’s “largest and grandest in scope” — might not appear to have much in common. But they overlap under the heading of “experiential design” and point to larger trends that find patrons willing to spend more on one-of-a-kind and premium experiences. The movie theater industry, in particular, has had to get creative in the face of a serious crisis following the COVID-19 pandemic and the rise of streaming platforms.
“A lot of times, people think the safe way to go is to be sort of middle-of-the-road,” Simmons said. “Actually, I think that’s not the safe way to go. The way to go is to give somebody something they can only get at one specific place … What are you doing to give people something they can’t get anywhere else? That’s that haunted house mindset.”
“There’s not going to be any other movie theater on this side of Pennsylvania that’s going to feel like this,” Simmons said of Row House-Hollywood. “The hope here is that you have plenty of movie theater choices. But if you’re coming to a place like this, which is interesting, visually dynamic, and also locally owned and created … it comes from a place of creativity and heart, not just numbers on a spreadsheet somewhere.”
In addition to renovating the main theater, Row House-Hollywood’s basement — once home to two storefronts and a bowling alley — will house a second 46-seat screening room, two private media rooms, a karaoke room, and a Japanese-style pinball arcade.
The Rocky Horror Picture Show, performed by the Junior Chamber of Commerce Players of Pittsburgh at the venue since the 1990s, will also remain at the Hollywood, with an upgraded stage and a dedicated dressing room and storage space in the theater’s basement.
Spanning the Hollywood’s 100-year-history, the main theater will offer both digital and 35/70mm film projection at the Hollywood using a dual-purpose Norelco projector. Restored from the Byham Theater, the projector was used at the world premiere of Night of the Living Dead in 1968. Screening across formats will allow Row House to show new releases for the first time, alongside repertory films, including a planned 35mm showing of The Exorcist this fall, something especially appealing to younger audiences seeing classics for the first time, Simmons said.
Row House plans to ramp up to 70mm projection by late 2026 or early 2027. This would make Row House-Hollywood the only theater in the region showing 70mm films, which have recently experienced a contemporary resurgence, promoted by directors including Paul Thomas Anderson and Christopher Nolan.
“Our relationship with media and screens has changed so much in the last century, but we still believe that a movie screening should be a grand and awe-inspiring experience,” Mendelssohn said. “This theater is designed with that goal in mind.”
This article appears in Sep 3-9, 2025.
