But Stern says audiences have begun to return.
The pandemic, of course, posed the biggest recent threat to the Manor, which like most other theaters was shuttered for much of both 20.
#Marquee name movie
Though it’s far from the oldest movie theater in the country, the Manor is one of an elite few that have survived the arrival of television - whose advent, in 1948, marked the beginning of a precipitous decline in movie attendance - along with multiplexes, digital streaming services and even a pandemic. “It’s the business I grew up in, and it’s kind of near and dear to my heart.” It’s kind of like a hobby,” said Stern, who also has been a prominent restaurateur in Pittsburgh. Stern’s company Stern Enterprises has owned the theater since 1992, and it has continued to show a distinctive mix of Hollywood fare and artier films, including many independent and foreign-language releases that don’t play elsewhere in town. Except for a few years in that decade, and another stretch starting in 1987, the Manor has stayed in the family since. Rick Stern joined the family business after college, in the early ’70s.
For four decades, starting in the 1930s, Squirrel Hill alone never had fewer than three theaters. Those were the days before multiplexes, when Downtown Pittsburgh had several movie theaters - most owned by the Sterns - and many neighborhoods had their own moviehouses, too. In 1969, his father, Ernest Stern, and a cousin, George Stern, expanded their already-extensive holdings of local movie theaters by buying the Manor. He grew up in Squirrel Hill and recalls “going there on Saturdays for 17 cartoons … and kind of spending the afternoon there, you know.” “It’s quite an accomplishment to have a theater continuously operating for 100 years except for a slight closure during a pandemic,” said long-time owner Rick Stern.
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