Garden Theatre Sign

Images and text copyright Jennifer Baron, 2007.

There is perhaps no sign on Pittsburgh's Northside that better conveys a neighborhood’s past, present and future like the pink neon of the Garden Theatre. Once a thriving movie palace bathed in color and light, the early twentieth century icon now basks under a very different spotlight. Following a six-year effort that culminated in a Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling, and deemed a linchpin by community activists, preservationists, architects and residents, the theatre is poised to lead revitalization efforts along the Northside’s Federal-North corridor.

Located at 10-14 W. North Avenue, the Garden Theatre first appeared in the Pittsburgh Directory in 1916. Designed by Pittsburgh architect Thomas H. Scott, whose work includes downtown’s Benedum-Trees Building, Wilkinsburg High School, numerous private residences, and an Aspinwall gas station, the Garden was built by prominent Northsider David Parks, vice president of Peoples National Bank. Constructed on land once occupied by wood-frame homes, the Garden features a 59-foot wide Beaux-Arts style terra cotta façade, a 990-seat single-screen theater and a three-part sign. Though deteriorated, the Garden’s towering sign reflects its past grandeur.

Growing up on Sandusky Street, Gus Kalaris has vivid memories of the sign's glow: “It was so colorful when you came up the street; it looked like lights were running and neon was flashing. The vertical sign spelled out letter by letter in red and green.” Kalaris was drawn to the sign’s animated display and decorative motifs: “It had a striped exterior painted with gold; it looked like an old-fashioned circus covering, with a lot of fluting. The ticket booth sat out front like at an amusement park.” A sign painted on the side of Swartz’s Drugstore at the corner of North Avenue and Federal Street advertised the Garden’s coming attractions and featured movie stars portraits. Kalaris frequented the theatre during a time when the block boasted a drug store, Masonic temple, cleaner, tavern and music school. Unique for theaters, the Garden’s lobby featured a doorway that led into an adjacent ice cream parlor.

The sign’s double-faced vertical structure, which dates to the late 1930s, is painted blue and announces the theatre’s name in pink uppercase neon. A middle, tent-like section features current films, and a lower rectangular marquee hangs over the sidewalk, repeating the theater’s name. Forming a triangular focal point, the sign draws the eye up toward the neon lettering as well as down to street level where the theater’s ornate ticket booth, now in the collection of the Frick Art & Historical Center, once welcomed patrons.

The sign’s Art Deco look is echoed in the blocky typeface on movie cards dating to the early 1940s that advertise the Garden as “air conditioned,” a feature reiterated in a neon sign that once hung at street level. A Hillgreen-Lane pipe organ, installed in 1919, provided accompaniment to vaudeville-style films that proceeded the introduction of “talking pictures” in 1927. After fifty-six years as a first- and second-run neighborhood house, the Garden became an adult movie theater in 1972. The sign's origin is detailed in a Historic American Buildings Survey conducted by the National Park Service in the 1970s. In 1958, the marquee fell under the heavy weight of snow, and was replaced with a simpler design. The attraction panels now feature cast-aluminum letters on illuminated white glass ground. Most of the sign’s decorative lighting has been converted from incandescent bulbs to neon tubing.

Sign maker Angelo Marotto restored and replaced neon, sockets and wiring, and added the marquee’s protective plastic in the 1990s. “It was a well built sign in its time. The marquee had running light bulbs around it and underneath, which was popular then.” Dubbing the sign a “pigeon motel,” Marotto attributes much of the sign’s deterioration to moisture created from birds nests built inside its steel cabinet. The copper plate bearing the manufacturer’s name is rusted beyond recognition. In 1994, the film “The Piano Lesson” which featured shots of the theater, financed sign improvements.

Tod Swormstedt, director of the American Sign Museum, believes the sign has been modified. “The three signs as a package are an odd mix of elements from different eras.” The sign is a composite of structures manufactured between the 1930s and 1950s. Swormstedt helps to paint a picture of the theater’s original sign “Lightbulbs--chasing and flashing--were the form of illumination for theatres until the mid-to-late 1920s; after neon hit the U.S., theatre signs were a combination of neon and bulbs.”

While working as an usher at the Garden in 1946, Jerry Fitzgerald, 76, regularly serviced the sign. “We changed the sign on Tuesday and Saturday nights; it took about one hour. The head usher stacked the letters just the way they was supposed to go before placing them.” To access the attraction board, Fitzgerald and fellow usher Bill Owens climbed up a catwalk to the building’s second floor—then a dance studio—and crawled out a window. “They were rectangular glass letters, 1 ½ x 2-feet, framed by metal. They slipped into grooves on the sign and were very heavy,” adds Owens. “When we occasionally dropped a letter, it made a lot of noise.” The ushers also changed incandescent bulbs that illuminated the sign’s edges and underside.

Writer Stefanie Klavens places the Garden in a national context: “Designed with eclectic themes and a variety of fanciful styles, these picture palaces represent an architectural gold mine and are an endangered American resource that is rapidly disappearing. Recently, the single-screen historic theater topped the National trust for Historic Preservation’s list of the most endangered places.” Local historian/educator John Canning, concurs: “It has a great facade and great neon lighting. We hope that in the rebirth of Federal-North it will come back to life as a spot for stage and screen events that will attract a much wider audience.” As a child in the 1940s, Canning rode the streetcar from Brighton Heights to the Garden: “Movies were shown there after they had a run in the major downtown theaters but before they went to the local neighborhood theaters.” In the 1970s, Canning attended impromptu concerts by members of The Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, who performed under the moniker “The Upper Partials” in the Garden’s second-floor space. “What a contrast: porno in the theater and fine music upstairs.” Canning ponders the theatre’s next run: “What really makes it stand out is the façade--everyone assumes they'd want to restore it.”

Lu Donnelly, project director with The Heinz Architectural Center, underscores the Garden’s visual and cultural merit: “There’s a persistent elegance about theaters built in the Edwardian era. Several small towns in western Pennsylvania are making efforts to re-use their theaters, but many are finding the expense too great and demolitions are more frequent than restorations. Saving a theater like the Garden is an important mission for the area.” David McMunn, president of the Mexican War Streets Society, hopes to witness a re-run of the Garden’s heyday: “It's one of the few single-screen movie houses left in Pittsburgh. As a historic district, we’re interested in maintaining the character of these buildings.”

An abridged version of this article was published in the Spring 2007 issue of Western Pennsylvania HISTORY Magazine, a publication of the Senator John Heinz History Center located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Sources:

Journal of the Theatre Historical Society, Vol. 19, No. 3, 1987.
Cinema Treasures (http://cinematreasures.org/theater/2655/).
Gus Kalaris. Interview with author. February 18, 2007.
Journal of the Theatre Historical Society, Vol. 19, No. 3, 1987.
Records of the Pittsburgh Film Office.
Angelo Marotto. Interview with author. February 23, 2007.
Tom Anthony. Interview with author. February 26, 2007.
Tod Swormstedt. Letter to author. February 23, 2007.
Bill Owens. Interview with the author. February 22, 2007.
David McMunn. Interview with author. February 18, 2007.
John Canning. Interview with author. February 18, 2007.
Klavens, Stefanie. A Disapperaring American Tradition. The Society for Commerical Archaeology. Fall 2003. Volume 21, No. 2.