Nov 9, 2025 By Brad Hundt 5 min read

DORMONT – When you think of the Hollywood Theater in Dormont, movie analogies naturally come to mind.

There’s Rocky Balboa getting up after being knocked down, or Michael Corleone snarling, “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.”

With the Hollywood Theater, just when you think it’s out, it comes back – and pulls audiences back in.

The 99-year-old moviehouse on Potomac Avenue has had a long and storied existence, with almost as many twists and turns as a tightly plotted crime caper. It opened before the arrival of talkies, and over the next century changed hands numerous times, opened, closed, opened again, closed again, opened again, closed again, and on and on in what seemed to be a never-ending cycle.

After being mothballed for the last couple of years, the Hollywood Theater is being reborn yet again, this time as Row House Hollywood. It had a soft reopening at the end of October, with screenings of Alfred Hitchcock movies, “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” and the new black comedy “Bugonia.” Its official reopening was this weekend, and next weekend it will be hosting a special screening of the 1928 silent classic “The Passion of Joan of Arc,” with accompaniment by the Bach Choir of Pittsburgh. They will be singing in the theater’s balcony and be accompanied by a 16-piece chamber orchestra.

On a recent morning just a handful of days before the official reopening, owner Brian Mendelssohn was presiding over a flurry of activity at the theater, with work being done in the lobby, and finishing touches being put on the main auditorium and its projection booth and a downstairs screening room.

“We’re getting the kinks out of the system,” Mendelssohn explained.

Row House Hollywood is now the second theater in Mendelssohn’s Row House Cinemas. A one-screen theater opened in a row house building on Butler Street in Pittsburgh’s Lawrenceville neighborhood in 2014, and has primarily been a repertory house, showing a mix of cult, foreign and independent films and classic Hollywood offerings.

A native of Florida who came to the region to attend Carnegie Mellon University, Mendelssohn’s interests have revolved around community development. In 2007, he founded Botero Development, and has been involved in launching a restaurant, shops and a co-working space. Row House Cinema came into being when he was considering “what does a neighborhood need to be a strong neighborhood, a proud neighborhood, a neighborhood you could walk in.” Mendelssohn had spent some time in Chicago, and believed that “a lot of neighborhoods were defined by their own theater,” and decided having a single-screen moviehouse in Lawrenceville would be good for that area.

“I love movies, but I knew nothing about the business,” Mendelssohn said.

With Row House Cinema being firmly rooted in Lawrenceville, Mendelssohn began to look for opportunities to expand. He looked at Regent Square Theater after it closed in 2019, but decided to take a pass on it. In 2023, the Hollywood Theater came on the market after having been owned by the Theatre Historical Society of America, an organization that celebrates historic theaters and their architecture. Before then, it had been kept alive by a nonprofit group, Friends of the Hollywood Theater, from 2011 to 2018.

“I got a phone call,” Mendelssohn explained. “They said, ‘We don’t want this building to die.'”

The resuscitation of the Hollywood Theater has involved more than restocking the concessions counter and throwing the doors open. About 400 new seats have been installed in the main auditorium, which vastly expands its capacity. A smaller, 46-seat screening room and bar have been built downstairs. Unlike the Row House theater in Lawrenceville, Row House Hollywood will focus on booking new movies, and the downstairs screening room will be used for movies that are nearing the end of their run, movie club gatherings or other special events.

In the South Hills, Row House Hollywood could eventually be joined by a counterpart in Mt. Lebanon. Mendelssohn has teamed up with the Denis Theatre Foundation in a drive to reopen the three-screen moviehouse that closed in 2004. Mendelssohn has pledged to invest $750,000 for equipment and other expenses if the foundation can raise a sufficient amount of money to revive the theater. If plans move ahead, Mendelssohn has said the Denis Theatre could reopen in 2028 in a “best-case scenario,” and he would lease the Denis from the foundation.

Row House Hollywood and, possibly, the Denis Theatre are reopening at a moment when most of the headlines about moviegoing have been grim. Theaters were closed during the COVID-19 pandemic, and attendance has yet to return to pre-pandemic levels. Some former moviegoers have simply fallen out of the habit, some have been scared off by ticket and concession prices, and some have decided to wait for movies to land on-demand or on a streaming service.

Despite this, Mendelssohn believes in the value of movie theaters and the communal experience of watching a film unspool with an auditorium full of other people. He likens it to going to a concert – you can listen to a favorite musician from sunrise to sunset at home, but seeing them live is a more immediate and visceral experience.

Mendelssohn sees Row House Hollywood as “a place of entertainment, a place of community and a great night out.”

Information on Row House Hollywood’s schedule can be found at rowhousecinemas.com.