The Harris Theater, Pittsburgh, Visitor Guide & Things to Do Nearby

The Harris Theater is a movie house on Liberty Avenue in the Cultural District of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It began life in 1931 as the Avenue Cinema and reopened under its current name in 1995, a change that reflects how the whole neighborhood was reinvented. Today it is a good place to see how downtown Pittsburgh turned a troubled stretch of street into an arts quarter.

The story behind it

The building opened in 1931 as the Avenue Cinema. Like many downtown movie houses, it lost ground in the decades after the war as people moved to the suburbs and television kept them at home. By the 1960s it had become an adult movie house, following the pattern of much of the surrounding area. For a time Liberty Avenue was known as a red-light district, with strip bars and peep shows along the street, and many Pittsburghers avoided downtown at night.

The turnaround came when the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust set out to transform the neighborhood into a cultural district. The old cinema reopened as the Harris Theater in 1995. Its name honors John P. Harris, who opened one of the earliest nickelodeons, small theaters that charged five cents for admission, on nearby Smithfield Street in 1905. Harris is remembered as a pioneer of film exhibition in Pittsburgh.

What to look for

• The theater front on Liberty Avenue, where the signage and film posters show that this is still a working cinema.
• The mix of buildings along the street, which shows how a district once known for vice now holds theaters, galleries and public spaces.
• The neighboring venues of the Cultural District, which together make the block feel like a single arts quarter.
• The name above the door, a quiet reminder of John P. Harris and the five-cent nickelodeons of the early 1900s.

Tips for your visit

• You can go inside for film screenings, so check the current schedule and opening hours before you plan an evening around it.
• Allow ten to fifteen minutes to look at the exterior and the street, or an evening if you attend a screening.
• Liberty Avenue is livelier and easier to appreciate in the late afternoon and evening, when the Cultural District is active.
• The Cultural District's other theaters and venues are close by, so it is easy to combine this stop with a longer walk downtown.

See it on a quest

The Harris Theater is one stop on Pittsburgh Historic Downtown, a self-guided walk through the center of the city. You reach the theater on foot as part of a longer route, the app tells you about the place as you arrive, and you solve a puzzle based on what is in front of you. There is no guide to follow and no group to join, and one ticket covers your whole group.