Irwins Lamp Theatre nears end of demo phase

Published: Wednesday, Feb. 19, 2014, 9:00p.m. Updated 12 hours ago

The inside of the old Lamp Theatre on Main Street in Irwin is a dark, cold, empty shell.

Mortar missing from the joints of the exposed terra-cotta block walls allows daylight and frigid air to stream into the building. A few pieces of dirty, velvet curtain and tattered wallpaper are all that remain from the days before the 76-year-old theater closed in 2004.

But the people leading the effort to restore the former movie house say the condition of the building is just about where it needs to be.

We've really been focusing on gutting the inside of the building so we can begin construction, said Councilman John Cassandro, who serves on the Relight the Lamp Committee. So it's pretty exciting that we're finally getting to the end of the demolition phase of this project. It's a milestone.

Since spring, volunteers have been busy ripping out old plaster, tearing down walls and removing piles of old paint cans, rusted wire, cinder block and debris that accumulated in the building over the years.

The theater seats need a good cleaning, but they are in pretty good shape, so we have them stored in Greensburg at the Westmoreland County Cultural Trust, Cassandro said. But there wasn't much of anything else that could be salvaged.

The theater was donated to the trust in 2006, which started remodeling in early 2009. After Irwin officials presented the Trust with a proposal to develop the building, it was sold to the borough in March for $1.

Irwin officials say the roughly $600,000 worth of work done by the trust put the Lamp project within reach.

There is no way we would have been able to take this on if we had to come up with all the money, Cassandro said. But now we feel confident that we can get this done.

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Irwins Lamp Theatre nears end of demo phase