INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
Inside the Hiway Theatre, it's strictly standing-room-only, and for good reason: There are no seats.
"The least of our worries," says Kathleen Geer.
It's hard to hear Geer, the theater's executive director, over the high-pitched cry of circular saws and the hollow, echoey thunk of nail guns wielded by half a dozen workers.
The venerable Hiway Theatre, a once and future Jenkintown institution, intends to reopen early next month after closing in August for a top-to-bottom, $1.6 million renovation. Its operators promise that when the lights blink to life on opening night, the 94-year-old, single-screen theater will dazzle with curtain-draped, 1940s charm.
"It's going to be different, a unique experience, not like going to the multiplex," says David Rowland, president of the board of directors.
The plan is to show bigger-budget independent films and high-quality studio releases. While patrons probably won't see a Harry Potter movie at the Hiway, they could easily see a film like The Pursuit of Happyness.
The theater is unusual both for its charm and its longevity. Today, single-screen theaters are no longer endangered - they're practically extinct, maybe 150 nationwide, a handful in this area. Some fill niche markets, showing art films or classics. Others have found new life as anchors for business districts, a means for generating excitement and driving foot traffic.
People hope the theater will create a community hub for Jenkintown, its home for decades.
In 1913, about the time D.W. Griffith was starting to produce full-length motion pictures, the Jenkintown Auditorium opened on Old York Road. It was advertised as a "House of Comfort and Refinement," a hall for lectures, meetings and concerts. Over the years it changed owners and names, evolving into the Embassy, the York Road Theater, the Hiway, the Merlin, the Chas III, and then the Hiway again.
Rowland led a new nonprofit group that bought the property in 2003, promising to restore and revive the theater. Many local residents had feared the next big event at the theater might be its demolition.
The new owners gave the place its most-familiar name. Since August they've gone a long way toward giving it back its shine.
A rich history within
The wood-and-glass doors still bear the majestic, swirling M that marked them as the entrance to the Merlin Theater.
They're going to stay.
"M is for movie," Rowland jokes.
Seriously, he and Geer say, the theater's turn as the Merlin was as legitimate as any of its previous incarnations, so why not retain that piece of its past?
The goal, they say, is to strike a balance between old and new, but most of all to make a statement, to turn the Hiway into a destination, a place where people can get something they can't get anywhere else.
Today, the arches that once graced the theater walls have been rebuilt. The Venetian plaster in the lobby hearkens to an earlier age.
During the last six months, Rowland says, the toughest questions were all variations of the same: What to put in, what to leave out.
For instance, back in the day, the screen hid behind a curtain that would dramatically sweep aside as the house lights dimmed. It turned out that to install a curtain today would cost about $10,000. At that point, a curtain was crossed off the want-list.
Some decisions were easy: No stadium seating. Some were hard, but obvious in the end: One screen, and one screen only.
The renovations include modern sound-and-projection equipment, handicapped access, and a roof that doesn't leak. The operators still plan to install what many view as the theater's defining element - a large, vertical marquee that proclaims "HIWAY" to travelers on Old York Road.
The seats - Geer says they'll arrive soon and take only three days to install - will be new but traditional-looking, and with cup holders. Broadening and leveling the lobby created space for community events, but shrank the seating capacity from 420 to 320.
As work progressed, treasures emerged from walls and crevasses: A World-War-I-era newspaper. Tickets to a burlesque show. Atop two doorways, workers found elaborate reliefs, griffins poised beside silver shields. Decades ago, during one makeover or another, someone thought to safely cover those artworks, protecting them for discovery by some future owner.
Projecting a civic renewal
A few doors up from the Hiway stand two vacant storefronts. Farther on, the shell of the Buca di Beppo Italian Restaurant sits empty. Oswald Drugs is closed too.
People in Jenkintown want the Hiway to do for their community what the Keswick Theater has done for Glenside, what the Ambler Theater is doing for that community. They want the Hiway to be a center, used by schools and civic groups during the day, helping to draw people to stores on evenings and weekends.
Jeff Landis, the theater's director of programming, says the Hiway has traditionally attracted an older crowd, so in selecting movies "we can't get too obscure, but we can go for very thoughtful." Now he wants to add matinees and even midnight movies for young audiences. He's thinking about having "date night," with child care provided, to draw parents with young children.
Added uses are crucial, Geer and others say, not just for the community but for the theater.
Today, single-screen movie houses have largely gone the way of the typewriter, their charm and elegance no match for the economic might of the multiplex and the seismic shifts of American society.
Multi-screen theaters can offer far greater selection of films, starting times and amenities. The 50-year rise of the American suburb requires movie houses to provide plenty of parking, difficult in compact business districts.
Sean O'Leary, film-production coordinator at Rowan University, believes restored single-screen theaters can benefit from the distaste many people feel toward the multiplexes. Some have come to see multi-screen theaters as efficient but not much fun, the film experience interrupted by ringing cell phones and people talking.
"The whole downtown theater thing offers a little bit more," says O'Leary, at work on a documentary about the Roxy Theater in Philadelphia. "It's not just going to the movies. It's a night out."
Making a date
The first movie ever shown at the Jenkintown theater, according to the Old York Road Historical Society, was a serial titled
The Adventures of Kathlyn
.
What movie will herald the reopening? That's still being discussed. Maybe something unique. Maybe something symbolic. Maybe something old, like Our Town, the title that graces the marquee on so many vintage photos of the Hiway.
Landis says the pick likely will be a current film, released within the last month, depending on the theater's actual opening date.
"We try to go for movies that you can't see everywhere," he says, "so you're going to come to the Hiway."