Eastland Mall Theatre

The Eastland Shopping Theatre was announced in the Fall of 1960 to be anchored by a Gimbel’s Department Store and a Sears store followed soon after its opening with a J.C. Penney’s. The two anchors launched before the mall’s other stores in August of 1963. Associated Theaters announced that it would add a single-screen cinema to the complex. The $400,000 elliptical structure with its vaulted roof was a daring design by architects Bernard J. Liff and Just of Liff-Just-Chetlin of Pittsburgh. Ground was broken in July of 1964 but soon Associated reconsidered the theatre’s design likely to better fit its spot in the shopping center and, likely, to save money on construction. The 1,000-seat road-show ready Eastland Theatre launched on Christmas Day of 1964 with Peter Ustinov in “Tokapi.”

The theatre was taken over by Cinemette Circuit. The shopping plaza got major competition in 1969 from the Monroeville Mall just six miles a way. In response, the complex housing the theatre became known as the Eastland Mall officially on November 14, 1973 as an enclosed shopping complex. But the closing of the Gimbel’s anchor led the Eastland Mall down a path toward greyfield status - a term synonymous with a “dead” or dying mall. Cinemette - seeing the mall in a downward spiral - downgraded its Eastland cinema to a sub-run dollar discount house on February 27, 1987. Cinemette would soon morph into Cinema World.

Cinema World appears to have dropped the location and it was run as an independent with the Manor Theatre to closure. The Eastland Theatre closed on July 30, 1992 at the end of a leasing cycle remaining as a sub-run discount venue. Its final films were “Lethal Weapon III” and “Beethoven” splitting with “Alien 3.” The Mall scraped by year after year with fewer and fewer stores and services until mercifully being shuttered in 2004 due to complaints including but not limited to falling ceilings, constant roof leakage, lack of heat, and buckling floors. The entire Mall including the former cinema was razed in 2007 with the exception of the Eastland Mall roadside attractor which curiously stayed as a “ghost sign” in the 2010s.

I liked that movie theater, it wasn’t,t crowded and movies where cheap. Last movie I saw there was The Bodyguard with my girlfriend in 1992 I think. Wish the show was still there but really wish Eastland Mall was still open or at least the flea market.

The theater was thriving and in excellent condition when Ross Falvo was manager back in the day. I’ll ask if he he remembers when the theater closed, although he was not there by then.

I got a chance to view some of the photos on Flickr. Great shots.

Oh and I hate, hate, hate the new Cinema Treasures format. The old one was much faster and much easier!

I still live a few miles from the formaer Eastland Mall/Theater. As a kid, friends and I would walk to the mall to shoplift Playboy Magazines from the Thrift Drug Store. Also to see movies. First saw “Goldfinger” and “Fantastic Voyage” there (Raquel Welch still looks ‘Fantastic’).
My mother drove me, in our new 1968 Ford Country Squire station wagon, to see “2001: A Space Odyssey”.

Re: The J. Evans Miller Collection of Cinerama Theater Plans: the collection includes plans for a number of theaters that were designed but never built; it is one of the interesting things about that collection because it reveals some aspects of Cinerama history that otherwise would not be known. For example, there are plans for the Vogue Theater in Cleveland (which would have been a conversion) but what actually happened was that Stanley-Warner decided not to convert the Vogue but build a new, purpose-built Cinerama house, which was built and called the Great Northern. I would bet that though the plans were drawn up to build the Eastland for Cinerama, they were not executed. Roland Lataille’s list of Cinerama theaters, which I have found to be very accurate, does not list the Eastland, so it is highly unlikely that it ever advertised any film shown there as being “in Cinerama,” though it might have shown a 70mm print of some the single strip titles.

Boxoffice of April 27, 1964, said that this theater was being designed for the Associated Theatres circuit by architects Liff & Justh. The finding aid for the J. Evan Miller Collection of Cinerama Theater Plans, which lists the Eastland, gives the firm’s name as Liff, Justh & Chetlin.

An obituary for Bernard J. Liff (he died in 2008) uses the plural “theaters” in listing the types of buildings he designed, but so far I’ve been able to find only one other theater project he was connected with. Boxoffice of December 23, 1974, said that he had been hired to design two cinemas for the downtown Pittsburg project called The Bank, which I guess would be the Bank Cinemas I & II.

A January 11, 1965, Boxoffice article about the opening of the Eastland (originally a single-screen house seating about 900) says that its projection room was equipped to run any process except three-strip Cinerama. It also says that the screen was only 40 feet wide, which seems rather small for even single-strip Cinerama, but as the house is included in the Miller collection I suppose it must have shown a Cinerama movie at least once.

Little more than a year after the opening of the Eastland, Boxoffice of January 17, 1966, said the the Eastland II was to be built adjacent to the original theater. The new auditorium was to have about 600 seats.

Old picture:
View link

The cinema opened on Christmas Day, 1964 you can see the grand opening announcement on this page at View link

I haven’t been to this area in years. Have they done anything with the old Eastland Mall site?

Does anyone have pictures of this theater? I went to it as a kid, and I would love to see some pics of it.

The mall has been demolished (including the theater too)