For years the Dormont summer was a set of good things that lived in different zip codes. You drove to a movie. You walked to the Pool. You made a separate plan for dinner. The evenings never quite stitched together, and by August most weekends felt like three errands in a trench coat.
That changed in November 2025, and this is the first full summer you get to feel it.
The marquee that reset the walk
Row House-Hollywood reopened on Potomac Avenue after a two-year renovation by Lawrenceville-based Row House Cinemas, with a sold-out grand reopening on Nov. 6 to mark a new era screening both new and older films. The building itself is not new. Row House-Hollywood first opened in 1926 as the Hollywood Theater, a neighborhood movie house on Dormont's Potomac Avenue. What's new is what happens after the credits.
The renovation drew from the atmospheric-theater tradition of the 1920s, when it was in vogue to give audiences the feeling that they were actually outdoors, with interior décor nodding to Fritz Lang's 1927 Metropolis. Underneath the main auditorium, the Hollywood's lower level will eventually include a bar, a lounge, a 46-seat screening room, arcade games and two small rooms for private events. Row House also plans to add the capacity to screen both 35 mm and 70 mm films, which is the kind of thing enthusiasts will drive across state lines for.
The programming matters more than the marquee. Row House-Hollywood is running callback and prop screenings twice a month with the JCCP, and free outdoor movies each month with Hazelwood Local. In practical terms that means a Saturday in July can start at the Pool, dry off on a bench, and end in a seat that costs less than dinner.
Potomac Avenue, block by block
The five-block stretch between the theater and the Pool is where the rest of the evening now lives. Two anchors worth naming:
- Preserving Record Shop, 1431 Potomac Ave. The third location of the Preserving brand, open 7 days a week and buying, selling and trading vinyl, CDs, cassettes and shirts everyday. It is a genuinely walkable stop between a 6 p.m. showtime and a late dinner.
- Moonlit Burgers, the Dormont location of what began as a pandemic pop-up. The concept now has locations in Dormont, Uptown and Sewickley, with a fourth eatery slated for a January launch in Garfield. The Dormont bar runs a $6 happy hour Monday through Thursday from 3 to 6 and Friday from 3 to 5, which lines up cleanly with the Pool's afternoon closeout.
None of these are new discoveries on their own. The change is that the theater's reopening gave them a reason to be visited in sequence rather than in isolation.
The Pool, in operating hours
The Pool is the other pole of the summer, and 2026 has a specific calendar worth pinning to the fridge. Pool is open May 23–September 1, 2026. Weekends: Noon–8 pm. Weekdays: Noon–7:30 pm, except May 26–June 5 and August 17–31 for school days (4:30–7:30 pm, no slide). July weekdays: Noon–8 pm. Closed first Monday of June, July, and August. The slide is open 1–6 pm on all non-school days.
A few things follow from that schedule if you've been here a while and think you already know it:
- The July window is the widest. Weekdays run noon to eight, which is the only stretch of the calendar where you can leave work at five and still get a full swim before the whistle.
- First Monday closures are load-bearing. June 1, July 6, and August 3 are all closed. Plan the birthday party elsewhere.
- The slide has its own hours. The 1 to 6 p.m. window on non-school days is narrower than the pool itself, which matters if you've promised a nine-year-old a specific afternoon.
Daily entry is $8. Children under 3 are free. Season pass buyers get 11:45am entry on weekends and a dedicated entry line so little to no wait to enter. The pool itself, for context, is a 1920s original: the Dormont Pool dates back to 1920, when Andrew Philp used rocks to dam a creek to make a wading pool. In 1922, the borough spent $6,851 to create a larger dam for a swimming area and an ice skating rink. It was declared a Historic Landmark in 2002. It is still one of the largest public pools in Pennsylvania.
Dormont Day, and why the parking lot is the plan
Dormont's July 4th, 2026 fireworks and Dormont Day celebration takes place in the Dormont Pool parking lot, beginning at 7 p.m. with grab bags, live music and food. The Zambelli fireworks show launches at 9:35 p.m. from Dormont Park. Grab bags run $5 each, available at the borough building or Dormont Pool.
The reason the parking lot is the answer, and not a driveway or a rooftop or a hill somewhere, is line of sight. Zambelli launches from the park itself, and the lot at 1801 Dormont Avenue puts you inside the show rather than adjacent to it. If you have small kids and a bedtime problem, the 9:35 launch is late; if you have teenagers, it's about right.
The rest of the calendar, without the driving
Two more things fill in the weekday texture:
The Recreation Board runs Movies in the Pool Lot — themed "Animals: the wild times of summer" — where attendees bring their own chairs and blankets and claim a spot in the Dormont Pool lot. The screenings are outdoor, family-oriented, and share the same parking lot the fireworks use, which is convenient in a way you notice after the second one.
And the Dormont Dash, which returns as a decades-long South Hills tradition with a hilly course that starts and ends at Dormont Pool, benefiting the Keystone Oaks Education Association Memorial Scholarship Fund. It's not a summer event in the July sense, but it closes the season the way Dormont Day opens it, and it belongs on the same page.
What this actually adds up to
The reason to notice all of this in one post is that Dormont has quietly resolved a problem most inner-ring suburbs never solve. The Pool was always here. The businesses on Potomac Avenue were always here. What was missing was a nighttime anchor that made the walk between them worth doing on a Friday. Row House-Hollywood is that anchor. It's a 1926 building that finally works like a 1926 building was supposed to, which is to say the reason you leave the house after dinner.
If you've been a Dormont homeowner for a decade, the practical read is that your weekend routine can now be done on foot from Potomac Avenue. If you're a newer neighbor still figuring out where the summer goes, the answer is: mostly within a five-block radius, and mostly after 5 p.m.
The buildings didn't move. The programming caught up.
If you're weighing whether the home you're in still fits the way you actually use Dormont — closer to the Pool, closer to the marquee, or something with a porch that catches the fireworks — I'm happy to talk it through. Theresa Doran works out of the Mt. Lebanon office and covers Dormont and the surrounding South Hills. Schedule a free consultation whenever you're ready.
