PHILIPSBURG — Anyone attending one of the first-run movies being shown at the venerable Rowland Theatre in Philipsburg will temporarily have to sit in the balcony.
That’s because the 106-year-old venue cleared out most of its old theater seats and is waiting for delivery of more than 400 brand new ones and a new carpet that will be installed on the main floor of the auditorium.
The schedule is for the work on the new carpet and seats to be complete by mid-March and for the theater to resume full operations shortly after.
The theater’s board of directors had been planning to upgrade the seats and the facility for years, and, according to board President Rebecca Inlow, the closing and problems due to the COVID-19 pandemic presented opportunities that made it all happen.
“We had already ordered the seats for the lower balcony when COVID struck,” Inlow said, “so we were locked in to finishing that project. But then we were forced to close and everything went on hold after that.
“The whole topic of new seats had been discussed for years and years, and we always had a to-do list and new seats were always on the list. And when this occurred, we decided finally to make it all happen.”
The project began in 2020 when the first set of new seats was installed in the balcony. Everything was then on hold for about two years until the board recently decided to push the go button.
“Even back then (in 2020) the thought was that we were going to progress downstairs. We had the same seating company on hold, and it was the fall of 2020 that we finished the seats upstairs,” Inlow said.
The new seats have been a big hit thus far.
“Everybody loves them. They are more comfortable, more space. They have been a big hit with people and they really like them. The new ones will be basically the same as upstairs, except there will be slightly different backs and cupholders,” she said.
Of course, there will be some down time before the new seats arrive.
“They are due to arrive in March and we will have a few weeks where we will be without seats down here. There will also be a smaller seat capacity because we wanted to have more space and make people more comfortable, probably going down about 100 seats to 400. More legroom,” Inlow said. “We are going to be incorporating some of the old, wider seats that were in the lower balcony since 1931. We’ll reupholster them and get them painted. They were very popular and everybody rushed to sit in them, so we are going to incorporate some of them down here.”
The project will cost close to $250,000, but as extensive as it is, it is just another thing on the list of improvements planned, according to Inlow.
“There are always projects,” she said. “They never end. I’m not sure what jumps to the top of the list after this. This has been our main focus for the last few years, but we are always doing something when we complete our latest project.”
Inlow talked about some other projects as well.
“For the longest time when we hit our 100th year in 2017 it was a dream to get our marquee replicated to the 1917 marquee. We never thought that would happen, but we got it completed for the centennial in 2017. There have just been all these projects that we do — the stained glass has all been renovated in the last few years and a new stage floor was put on. We’ll always take some piece of this theater and restore it,” she said.
Still, recovering from the pandemic will not be easy, according to Inlow, and it will take a lot of work and thinking outside of the box.
“I don’t know that we will ever fully recover from COVID,” she said. “Movie going has changed as we know it and we’re looking at that. We’re not so sure we can totally survive on just ticket sales because the attendance has not yet come back to previous levels. But we have a few concerts coming up in May and we’re hoping they do well. We had dinner and a movie this past Saturday and that did well.”
Inlow is hopeful that the theater can draw people from across Blair, Centre and Clearfield counties.
“We’re hopeful that the concerts and special events might bring people in. We are always looking for ways to get people in from out of town, from State College, Altoona, Tyrone, Clearfield. In that regard, we have two great shows coming up,” Inlow said.
She then talked about the lineup for the coming months.
“On May 6, the first Saturday, the Paragon Ragtime Orchestra is coming back to us with the silent movie, ‘Safety Last.’ They have been here before and they put on great shows,” Inlow said. “Then, on May 27, we have a show out of Las Vegas called ‘Yesterday Once More.’ They do the music of the Carpenters, the Fifth Dimension, the Mamas and Papas, and ABBA. That is going to be a really good show, and tickets for both will go on sale very soon (possibly as soon as March 1).”
If you’ve never been to the Rowland, what are you waiting for?
“When you come to a movie here, it’s a special event in itself. You are not just in any ordinary theater; you’re in a 106-year-old theater that looks like it did all that time ago. We are always trying to keep things accurate to the past,” Inlow said. “It’s a great place to spend an evening, and we are trying to make the evening and events as comfortable as possible and we are reaching that point now.”
The theater is located on North Front Street in Philipsburg.
