Shillington Theater
29 E. Lancaster Avenue,
Shillington,
PA
19607
29 E. Lancaster Avenue,
Shillington,
PA
19607
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This Shillington Theater replaced an earlier Shillington Theater at 22 New Holland Avenue (which has its own page on Cinema Treasures). The ‘new’ Shillington Theater was opened in September 1949. It was twinned in the 1970’s and closed sometime in the 1980’s. Google maps this address as being in Reading, Pennsylvania.
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Recent comments (view all 7 comments)
Shillington is a suburb of Reading. I was only in here once. That was to see “Blazing Saddles”.
This Shillington theater opened in Sept. of 1949. It replaced an older Shillington theater located at 22 New Holland Ave, which was closed when this new theater opened. Seating for the new Shillington theater at 29 East Lancaster Ave, was advertised as having 654 seats.
The map photo should point to Berks Bible Church.
American Classic Images has photos of this Shillington theater.
This version of the Shillington Theatre was a nice second run neighborhood theatre for many years. However it was not until the late 1960’s that the Shillington Theatre was able to run movies on Sundays due to the local municipality refusing to repeal and continuing to enforce Pennsylvania’s antiquated “blue laws” which forbade entertainment (and bars) being open on Sundays unless the local muncipality voted otherwise.
Around 1968 the Shillington theatre was switched to first run for a short time after most of the aging downtown Reading first run theatres were either closed or burned to the ground (urban renweal at its finest) Once the suburban mall theatres aroung Reading opened the Shillington reverted untimately reverted to second run.
Sometime in the 1970’s the Shillington was twinned with a wall up the middle.
In the late 1970’s through its closing in the late 1980’s the Shillington became a quasi- art house showing more popular art house product. If I recall “The Gods Must Be Crazy” played one screen of the Shillington for at least 6 months to the point where the print became almost destroyed and missing the last few minutes (but they continued to play it anyway).
Actually, this theatre was purchased by my mother in 1968. The first show she had as owner was “Camelot.” I remember as a 12 year old going around to the residents to sign the petition to open on Sundays. It was turned into the Shillington Twin Stars in May 1978. She added an apartment above the marquee in 1979. She sold to Fox in June 1983 when she retired. I spent many a night there. Good times indeed.
moptopfan – hopefully you have some photos of the theater in the day to share with us as there is nothing on CT
Plans to build the new Shillngton Theatre were announced in the August 11, 1948 issue of The Exhibitor. It was being built for Joseph M. Shverha, owner of the original Shillington Theatre, and was designed by architect Francis Jobson of Valley Forge, Pennsylvania.