Coyle Theatre
A view from the balcony of the Coyle Theatre's stage
Updated July 29, 2024 | By Matthew Christopher
The Construction of the Coyle Theatre
The Coyle Theatre in Charleroi, Pennsylvania, opened at 331 McKean Ave. in 1892, although there's a frustrating amount of ambiguity about when. According to the Charleroi Area Historical Society, there was an opera house on the second floor of the building that opened before the theater was completed. The earliest I can find events advertised there is 1891. Meanwhile, another article in the January 14, 1892 edition of the Monongahela Valley Republican mentions the construction of the new "Coyle's Theatre," a playhouse with its name on a 'handsome plate of embossed glass' bearing the name above the transom, which would be ready on February 1, 1892. It's confusing! The Coyle Theatre was designed by architect Robert L. Barnart, who had also drafted plans for a school and a hotel in Donora, as well as several banks in the Monongahela Valley. The theater had 700 seats and a Thomson-Houston dynamo in the cellar to power the building's 150 electric lights.
"Well-known forty-niner" and "pioneer resident" John Coyle founded the Coyle Theatre, and the Yohe brothers are listed as the builders. Architect Barnart was also the first theater manager. He retired in 1894, likely to continue his business as an architect. S. P. Yohe took over, and then Coyle's son Robert Swan Coyle was appointed manager sometime before 1900 when The Daily Republican described him as the "youngest theater manager in the business" with plans to remodel the Coyle into one of the "finest playhouses outside of Pittsburgh. Coyle, born in 1879, was only 20 at the time. R. S. Coyle's son, Robert Wesley Coyle, was born in an apartment above the theater in 1924 and would later own and operate the business.
Looking back from the stage across the Coyle Theatre's auditorium
Early Events at The Coyle Theatre
The earliest advertised event I've located at the Coyle Theatre is the "First Annual Entertainment and Bazar" from May 19-21, 1892, hosted by the Knights of Pythias Charleroi Lodge No. 363. Knights of Pythias was a secret society founded in 1864 whose popularity swelled over the years – by 1920, there were over a million members. There were various attractions at the "Bazar," such as "Fancy Booths, Candy Stands, Ice Cream and Lunch Table, etc." Professor John Sturgeon presented Shakespeare selections, and Miss Laura Ellen Ward and M. Romaine Billingsley of California rendered "choice solos, duets, recitations, &c." Also, Mrs. Anne Lucas Tener, "Pittsburgh's Famous Singer," entertained the audience in "her usual brilliant style." W 7 J Mandolin Club performed, joined by their "highly amusing Mascot," and Charleroi Club played a baseball game against "Our Boys" of Pittsburgh.
Events at the Coyle Theatre are relatively standard early theater fare for the period: school commencements, church luncheons, vaudeville and minstrel shows, political and charity events, orchestras and choral clubs, and even boxing matches were held on nights plays weren't performed. There was an "Old Maids Convention" in 1900 that I'm quite curious about, but unfortunately, no details about the festivities are listed. An inspector ordered the theater closed in 1911 due to safety concerns about the "unsafe, filthy, and in poor condition" of the theater (source). The theater management pointed out they had the right to continue operating while they addressed his concerns. Programming resumed as usual the following night. Given the lack of follow-up articles and the continued performances at the theater, the inspector's complaints must have been resolved.
A closer view of the Coyle Theatre's massive screen
Other unusual events at the theater included the sudden death of pianist Freddie Lindauer in 1920 while he was performing in the orchestra pit. Lindauer's friends carried him to his apartment above the theater but he died before he got there; newspapers listed the cause as "acute indigestion." In 1921, an "armed bandit" attempted to hold up theater manager Robert S. Coyle. The thief pointed an "automatic revolver" at Coyle's face, but Coyle wrestled with him for the gun and called out for help. The town's Justice of the Peace heard him and raced to his aid, but the assailant escaped.
The Coyle Theatre's Glory Years
In 1927, the theater was enlarged to approximately 1,000 seats and modernized. This renovation was when many of the venue's distinctive Art Deco flourishes were added. Vaudeville performances still occurred at the theater, but motion pictures were taking their place as the dominant form of entertainment. As part of the festivities surrounding the update, enormously popular silent film actress Clara Bow appeared on Christmas day to promote her new movie Get Your Man, which was showing at the Coyle.
The projectors were still in the projectionist's booth at the Coyle Theatre
The Coyle Theatre introduced more exciting additions in the coming years: "talkies" debuted at the theater in 1929 with the film The Wolf of Wall Street. Vitaphone and Movietone, two competing sound systems, provided the mesmerizing addition of sound to the film. The Coyle Theatre apparently had both. The screen was also enlarged, and events featuring the new talking films were sold to capacity. In 1930, the relatively new Magnascope technology and an 18 by 34-foot screen were installed. During a Magnascope film, at a certain point, "the side drapes suddenly parted farther, disclosing a screen the full size of the stage on which a picture several times normal dimension was flashed. The sudden thrill of this literally and actually brought the audience to its feet cheering" (source). During the same year, audiences were thrilled with the introduction of the two-color Technicolor film Paramount on Parade, which dazzled patrons with Paramount's most prominent stars appearing in short sketches. The theater had screened nearly every Paramount film over the previous decades, so this must have been quite a treat for the audience. Perhaps because of my interest in the tragic story of cartoonist Percy Crosby, I was also fascinated to learn that his film Skippy, starring a young Jackie Cooper, was shown at the Coyle in 1931. The theater was remodeled again in 1940, although I have yet to find a source detailing the update.
News in the years to come was sparse: a burglary was thwarted in 1946 when a night watchman discovered the would-be thief hiding behind a desk and arrested him at gunpoint. In 1957, newspapers reported that vandals damaged the seats and ladies' room with knives during an evening show. Beyond that, mentions of the Coyle in newspapers were generally in film advertisements.
The auditorium of the Coyle Theatre was very dark. Even the seats at the entrance were barely visible.
The Decline of Charleroi
The town of Charleroi, named after the Belgian city by immigrants who lived in that part of the Monongahela and later dubbed "Magic City," experienced the same slump that impacted much of the Rust Belt from the 1970s onward. A decline in regional industries, primarily steel plants, devastated the town's economy and population. Census numbers peaked in the 1930s at over 11,000 residents but halved by the 1980s and have continued to drop since. Unable to sustain itself with a dwindling base of clients, the Coyle Theatre closed in 1981 but reopened in 1983 when a pair of laid-off steelworkers, James Greco and Alan Maund, reupholstered seats, added a new curtain and fireproof wall coverings, enlarged concessions, and installed new equipment. There was talk of converting the theater into a performing arts center in 1987, and the last listing in the newspaper was for a matinee film that same year. A Kiwanis Club Circus was held there in 1989, and then the news items ceased.
Closure and Demolition
The Coyle Theatre closed in 1999 with a showing of Titanic. Though volunteers in the community clearly cared deeply for it and tried to save it, people in the community that I've spoken to hint that there was also a concerted effort behind the scenes to tear it down. The Mid Mon Valley Cultural Trust owned the building in 2012 and had a sale of film artifacts, including old posters and reels in the theater, to raise funds in a desperate bid to attain matching state grants. The trust sold the theater to the Mon Valley Alliance in 2015. Some Mid Mon Valley Cultural Trust members filed a lawsuit that this sale was against their organization's charter, but a judge dismissed their claim.
The Art Deco entrance of the Coyle Theatre was both spectacular and memorable
Though the entire district was on the National Register of Historic Places and according to the chairman of the Charleroi Area Historical Society the Coyle was the last intact and restorable historic landmark theater in Washington County, demolition of the theater began in 2019. Facebook posts by community members expressed heartbreak, helplessness, and anguish at watching a treasured part of their town shredded. When the marquee, installed in 1927, was ripped off of the building, the original glass plate over the transom bearing the title "The Coyle Theatre" was exposed for the first time in nearly a century. Then, the building was no more. As of this writing, almost five years later, the spot where the Coyle once stood is now just an empty lot.
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