Cinema & Drafthouse
West Hazleton, PA (2003-2025)
The last of the eight original theaters in Hazleton and West Hazleton has shown its final film. It was announced that the owners of Cinema & Drafthouse on Broad Street has sold the building, which I'm told is going to be converted into a church. Just what this town needs... another church... as if there aren't enough abandoned churches within walking distance of this theater.
It opened as the Hersker Theatre in 1915. It was a single screen theater with around 300 seats and it showed silent films for about fifteen years before they showed their first "talkie" film.
The theater was expanded to 600 seats and remodeled in an Art Deco style in 1938. It was renamed the Key Theatre which it operated as for over thirty years before it reverted back to its original Hersker Theatre name after its second remodeling in 1969.
 |
| Standard Speaker - Hazleton, PA (September 28, 1987) |
 |
| Standard Speaker - Hazleton, PA (July 23, 1985) |
It remained in operation under the Hersker Theatre for about twenty years, and it's this stage of its life that I came here for the first time. In fact, this is the first place that I ever saw a movie on the big screen in a theater when my grandfather brought me here to see The Black Cauldron not long after my fifth birthday.
 |
| Standard Speaker - Hazleton, PA (January 6, 1988) |
 |
| Standard Speaker - Hazleton, PA (March 7, 1987) |
The Hersker family sold the theater in the late 80's, after which time it briefly operated under the names Majestic Theatre and Casino Theater West until it reverted back to the Key Theatre name in 1992 for the third time in the venue's history.
 |
| Standard Speaker - Hazleton, PA (September 29, 1996) |
 |
| Times Leader - Wilkes Barre, PA (July 13, 1997) |
 |
| Standard Speaker - Hazleton, PA (July 12, 1997) |
The third and final run as the Key Theatre lasted from 1992 to 2003, and it's this era that I remember best. It remained a single screen theater and they mostly handled second run films. In other words, they screened films that had already finished their run at larger theaters and chains, but had not yet appeared on cable television or on the shelves of video rental stores.
There were two things about The Key that made me fall in love with the place. First, it was about two blocks away from my grandparents house where I lived when I was a teenager, so I could walk there in less than five minutes. If that wasn't cool enough, all tickets to all screenings were only a dollar. There were even days that they only charged a dollar for popcorn, soda, or candy. You really couldn't go wrong. I saw so many movies here that I couldn't even begin to list them all.
Sadly, the business model of running a movie theater at dollar store prices wasn't sustainable. The Key closed in 2003 and was sold to new owners. They renamed the theater to Cinema & Drafthouse and changed the business model to a hybrid movie theater and restaurant.
We saw several movies at the Cinema & Drafthouse over the years, but if I'm being completely honest, I wasn't happy with the changes at all. Obviously, they couldn't keep it as a dollar house and turn a profit, but they didn't have to rip the seats out of a historic theater and turn it into something that looked and felt like a lecture hall from a community college.
I'm also not an especially big fan of the "dinner and a movie" hybrid concept. When I go to see a movie, I don't want to be distracted by servers who sometimes walk directly in front of you, and I really don't want to hear the sounds of people eating and drinking. On the other side of this, when I go to a restaurant, I want to talk with my dinner companions and not be distracted by a screen. Combining these two concepts into a single business results in a movie watching experience that is inferior to practically every other theater, and a restaurant that is inferior to practically every other restaurant. I'm sure that there's a way to make this concept work, like maybe a lower level that serves as the restaurant floor and a balcony that has traditional theater seating for folks who just want to watch the film, but the side of this property wouldn't allow for something like that.
Even if they were to stumble on the right balance of an optimal theater and restaurant experience, the simple fact is that I don't always want to get something to eat when I go out to a movie. There have been quite a few times when they were showing a movie that I would have definitely gone to see if it was just a movie theater, but I wasn't hungry, so I didn't go. Naturally, the people who run the place will tell you that you don't have to order food, but then why go here at all instead of the Regal Cinema that's less than two miles away?
If the food was really good, it could have potentially made me overlook the things that I didn't love about this place, but it was just kind of... meh. Nothing that I've eaten there was bad, but it wasn't especially good either. If the same food was served at a roadside diner, it would be the kind of place that I'd visit once just to take in the ambiance and never go back.
Despite my gripes about the Cinema & Drafthouse, there were definitely some positive things about the place. First of all, it was the perfect for screening smaller projects that had local appeal, like the Angela Park documentary that we saw here in 2017. It was also a pretty great venue for sports, and it was where I saw the Eagles win their first Super Bowl the following year. They also were a great spot for stand-up comedy, and it became an annual Thanksgiving Eve tradition to see Raymond The Amish Comic here with my dad.
So now, after 23 years in operation as the Cinema & Drafthouse and after over a century of showing movies on the big screen in West Hazleton, PA, the little single screen theater on Broad Street has closed its doors.
I can't help but to wonder what this place could have been if it had turned into a retro cinema like The Mahoning or The Gap back in 2003. The current cinema culture has shown that people will travel across the country, or even around the world, to see a classic film on 35mm, particularly when it's screened in a historic venue. The Mahoning and The Gap also show that a retro cinema theater doesn't need to be in a big city to be successful, as Lehighton and Wind Gap are are no larger than West Hazleton, and they're less accessible to travelers than the Cinema & Drafthouse which is just a few miles off of I-81. There are also places like The Colonial Theater in Phoenixville which show that an entire downtown culture can spring up around a theater that shows classic films if it's done right.
It's depressing to think about what this place could have been and what it's going to be now that it has been sold; another lost opportunity for the Hazleton area.
