The Cultural District is a fourteen-square block area in

Downtown Pittsburgh Downtown Pittsburgh, colloquially referred to as the Golden Triangle, and officially the Central Business District, is the urban downtown center of Pittsburgh. It is located at the confluence of the Allegheny River and the Monongahela River who ...

, USA bordered by the

Allegheny River The Allegheny River ( ) is a long headwater stream of the Ohio River in western Pennsylvania and New York. The Allegheny River runs from its headwaters just below the middle of Pennsylvania's northern border northwesterly into New York then i ...

on the north, Tenth Street on the east, Stanwix Street on the west, and Liberty Avenue on the south. The Cultural District features six theaters offering some 1,500 shows annually, as well as art galleries, restaurants, and retail shops. Its landmarks include: Allegheny Riverfront Park,

Benedum Center The Benedum Center for the Performing Arts (formerly the Stanley Theatre) is a theater and concert hall located at 237 7th Street in the Cultural District of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Designed by the Philadelphia architectural firm Hoffman-Hen ...

Byham Theater The Byham Theater is a landmark building at 101 Sixth Street in the Cultural District of Downtown Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. Originally built in 1903 as The Gayety Theater, the former vaudeville house was renovated and reopened as ...

, Harris Theater, Heinz Hall,

O'Reilly Theater The O'Reilly Theater is a 650-seat theater building, opened on December 11, 1999, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Located at 621 Penn Avenue in downtown Pittsburgh's Cultural District, the O'Reilly Theater is actually a three-part building: The t ...

, Pittsburgh Creative and Performing Arts School, Three Rivers Arts Festival Gallery,

Wood Street Galleries Wood Street Galleries, a visual arts project of the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, is a gallery located in Downtown Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Pennsylvania (; (Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanni ...

, and the August Wilson Center for African American Culture. Major arts organizations based here include: Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre,

Pittsburgh Civic Light Opera Pittsburgh Civic Light Opera (Pittsburgh CLO) is a nonprofit professional theater company based in the Cultural District of Downtown Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. Despite its name, the organization presents musical theatre classics rather ...

, Pittsburgh Dance Council,

Pittsburgh Opera Pittsburgh Opera is an American opera company based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Pittsburgh Opera gives performances in several venues, primarily at the Benedum Center, with other performances at the Pittsburgh Creative and Performing Arts Sch ...

, Pittsburgh Public Theater,

Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra The ''Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra'' (''PSO'') is an American orchestra based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The orchestra's home is Heinz Hall, located in Pittsburgh's Cultural District. History The Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra is an Ameri ...

Bricolage Production Company Bricolage Production Company is a professional theatre company based in downtown Pittsburgh. Established in 2001 by Jeffrey Carpenter, it is located aCommunity Forge an inclusive community center in Wilkinsburg, PA. The company's mission is to use ...

, and

Pittsburgh Playwrights Theatre Company Pittsburgh Playwrights Theatre Company is a professional theatre company located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. Founded in 2003 by artistic director Mark Clayton Southers, the company originally held productions at the Penn Theater in ...

History

The cultural district was the brainchild of

H. J. Heinz II Henry John Heinz II (July 10, 1908 – February 23, 1987) was an American business executive and CEO of the H. J. Heinz Company based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. His grandfather Henry J. Heinz founded the company in the nineteenth centu ...

(1908—1987), known as Jack Heinz, and is managed by the

Pittsburgh Cultural Trust The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust (PCT) is a nonprofit arts organization formed in 1984 to promote economic and cultural development in Downtown Pittsburgh. The "Trust" has focused its work on a 14-square block section called the Cultural District, ...

. The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust was formed in 1984 to realize Jack's vision of an entire cultural district for blocks of the Penn-Liberty Avenue corridor, which then was a blighted area.

Transforming Loew's Penn Theatre into Heinz Hall for the Performing Arts

Built as the Loew's and United Artists' Penn Theatre, construction of the building was completed in 1927. Motion picture business magnate and pioneer

Marcus Loew Marcus Loew (May 7, 1870 - September 5, 1927) was an American business magnate and a pioneer of the motion picture industry who formed Loew's Theatres and the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film studio (MGM). Life and career Loew was born in New York City, ...

engaged the architectural firm of

Rapp & Rapp C. W. & George L. Rapp, commonly known as Rapp & Rapp, was an American architectural firm famed for the design of movie palaces and other theatres. Active from 1906 to 1965 and based in Chicago, the office designed over 400 theatres, inclu ...

to design the

movie palace A movie palace (or picture palace in the United Kingdom) is any of the large, elaborately decorated movie theaters built between the 1910s and the 1940s. The late 1920s saw the peak of the movie palace, with hundreds opening every year between 192 ...

. The Grand Lobby was particularly impressive, with its 50-foot (15 m)-high vaulted Venetian ceiling, massive ornamental columns, marble staircase, bronze and crystal chandeliers and silk drapes. Like many 1920s-era film palaces, Loew's Penn Theatre fell on hard times in the 1960s. Competition from television and suburban theaters along with high maintenance costs put a squeeze on profitability. The theater shut its doors in 1964 and was scheduled for demolition. Henry J. Heinz II and Charles Denby, President of the Pittsburgh Symphony Society, together with the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the

Allegheny Conference The Allegheny Conference on Community Development is a nonprofit, private sector leadership organization dedicated to economic development and quality of life issues for a 10-county region in southwestern Pennsylvania, United States centered aro ...

and the Urban Redevelopment Authority of Pittsburgh, purchased the site and rescued the theater for the purpose of creating a new home for the Pittsburgh Symphony. Jack Heinz and others, including his son,

United States Senator The United States Senate is the upper chamber of the United States Congress, with the House of Representatives being the lower chamber. Together they compose the national bicameral legislature of the United States. The composition and po ...

from Pennsylvania

John Heinz Henry John Heinz III (October 23, 1938 – April 4, 1991) was an American businessman and Republican politician from Pennsylvania. Heinz represented the Pittsburgh suburbs in the United States House of Representatives from 1971 to 1977 ...

, and William Rea, began the changes that would follow in the district with the purchase and renovation of the former

, Loew's Penn Theater, which was then transformed into the opulent and newly renamed Heinz Hall. This magnificent

concert hall A concert hall is a cultural building with a stage that serves as a performance venue and an auditorium filled with seats. This list does not include other venues such as sports stadia, dramatic theatres or convention centres that ma ...

reopened after a complete restoration in 1971 as the new home for the Pittsburgh Symphony. The current seating configuration is 2,676. Heinz Hall is owned and operated by the Pittsburgh Symphony Society.

The Stanley Theater becomes the Benedum Center for the Performing Arts

The Trust's first major project was the restoration of another visually stunning former

, the Stanley Theater. The Stanley Theater was designed by the renowned theater architectural firm of Hoffman & Henon and opened on February 27, 1928. At the time, it had the distinction of being the largest theater in Western Pennsylvania, and was commonly known as "Pittsburgh's Palace of Amusement". After a $43 million restoration returning it to its original splendor, it reopened in 1987 as the newly renamed

for the Performing Arts, and is currently able to host about 2,885 people. The Benedum Center is owned and operated by the

The Fulton Theater becomes the Byham Theater

The

, a landmark building at 101 Sixth Street in Downtown Pittsburgh, was the second major theater venue restoration project of the

. Built in 1903, the then called Gayety Theater was a stage and

Vaudeville Vaudeville (; ) is a theatrical genre of variety entertainment born in France at the end of the 19th century. A vaudeville was originally a comedy without psychological or moral intentions, based on a comical situation: a dramatic composition ...

house, and it featured stars such as

Ethel Barrymore Ethel Barrymore (born Ethel Mae Blythe; August 15, 1879 – June 18, 1959) was an American actress and a member of the Barrymore family of actors. Barrymore was a stage, screen and radio actress whose career spanned six decades, and was regard ...

Gertrude Lawrence Gertrude Lawrence (4 July 1898 – 6 September 1952) was an English actress, singer, dancer and musical comedy performer known for her stage appearances in the West End of London and on Broadway in New York. Early life Lawrence was born Gertr ...

, and

Helen Hayes Helen Hayes MacArthur ( Brown; October 10, 1900 – March 17, 1993) was an American actress whose career spanned 80 years. She eventually received the nickname "First Lady of American Theatre" and was the second person and first woman to have w ...

. It was renamed The Fulton in the 1930s when it became a full-time movie theater. In 1990, the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust bought the theater and refurbished the Fulton as part of its plan for the Cultural District. The Byham family of Pittsburgh made a major naming gift for a 1995 renovation, and it has been the

since. The current seating configuration is 1,300. The Byham Center is owned and operated by the

The Cultural District today

Today the 14-square block area continues to transform and flourish from a

red-light district A red-light district or pleasure district is a part of an urban area where a concentration of prostitution and sex-oriented businesses, such as sex shops, strip clubs, and adult theaters, are found. In most cases, red-light districts are partic ...

with only two cultural facilities—Heinz Hall and the Convention Center—to a dynamic arts and residential neighborhood with more than fourteen arts venues, including the Pittsburgh Creative and Performing Arts School, public parks and plazas, and new commercial development. The

applies a holistic approach and vision to urban redevelopment: streetscaping programs, facade restorations, new cultural facilities, public open spaces and art projects. The Cultural District's transformation is widely praised and serves as a model for urban redevelopment through the arts. Brendan Lemon of ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' wrote, "To describe Pittsburgh's unconventional, un-Disneyfied remodeling of its Cultural District... is to explore how theater can help transform urban identity". The Cultural District is also home to the

Pittsburgh Film Office The Pittsburgh Film Office (PFO) is a non-profit 501(c)3 corporation dedicated to economic development in the Pittsburgh and southwestern Pennsylvania region. History Created in 1990 to attract film production projects to the greater Southwestern ...

, a non-profit organization that markets the greater southwestern Pennsylvania region as a great location for movie, television and commercial productions. Since its inception in 1990, the PFO has assisted more than 102 feature films and television productions to southwestern Pennsylvania to generate an economic impact of more than $575 million for the region.Pittsburgh Film Office – About Us
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Listing of theaters in the Cultural District

(formerly the Stanley Theater) *

(formerly the Gayety Theater, then the Fulton Theater) * Harris Theater (formerly Art Cinema) * Heinz Hall (formerly Loew's Penn Theater) *

(newly built in 1999) * The August Wilson Center for African American Culture * The Cabaret at Theatre Square *

Visual Arts in the Cultural District

* Future Tenant * SPACE * 707-709 Penn Galleries * Watercolors Gallery * ToonSeum

References

*
Post-Gazette update July 2012
{{Pittsburgh, Allegheny County, Pennsylvania Neighborhoods in Pittsburgh Theatres in Pittsburgh Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation Historic Landmarks Tourist attractions in Pittsburgh Entertainment districts in the United States