Repairs at Vandergrift's Casino Theater set for completion by end of year

Another piece of the decades-long repair efforts at Vandergrift’s Casino Theater is set to wrap up by the end of the year, borough engineer Lucien Bove said.

He said crews will complete the second phase of a restoration project that will see sections of the building’s masonry repointed, windows replaced and plaster improved.

The project’s first phase included the replacement of the theater’s roof, among other repairs.

Bove said masonry work is about 75% complete, and the window replacements should be finished in November. The borough, which owns the structure, is still waiting on bids for the plaster work.

After these repairs, the oldest working theater in Southwestern Pennsylvania shouldn’t need any major improvements for the foreseeable future, Bove said.

“We should be good for quite a few years on this building,” he said.

But a 125-year-old building will always require maintenance, said Anthony Ferrante, president of Casino Theatre Restoration and Management, a nonprofit group that operates the site.

The Casino was opened in 1900 as a vaudeville theater by the borough’s founder, industrialist George McMurtry. Over the years, it has hosted numerous famous personalities, including President William Howard Taft, Roy Rodgers, the Three Stooges and Mickey Rooney.

It later became a movie theater and now also holds stage productions again.

After the Casino fell into disrepair following its 1981 closure and a decade-long vacancy, Ferrante and his group began working to restore it in the early 1990s. It officially reopened in 1995.

He said the group replaced the walls, seats, pillars and nearly all of its internal components.

“There’s nothing we didn’t touch,” he said.

Though it opened before film projection was widely popular, the theater now hosts a new movie screen.

The theater is hosting a screening of George Romero’s “Night of the Living Dead” at 7 p.m. Oct. 18.