By the time Harry Davis and John Harris opened their Nickelodeon on Smithfield Street in June 1905, Pittsburgh theatergoers had been watching flickering images on screens for almost a decade.

Pittsburgh's Nickelodeon -- its name is a combination of the word for the 5-cent admission price and the Greek term for "theater" -- is often described as the world's first venue devoted exclusively to presenting films. Movies, however, were no longer a novelty by that time.

On Sept. 8, 1896, The Pittsburgh Press printed brief reviews of not one but two cinema presentations that were opening that week at city theaters.

The main attraction at the Bijou theater, located in the 600 block of Penn Avenue, was a traditional play called "The Sidewalks of New York." It was described as a "melodrama dealing with life in the metropolis." Also on the evening bill was a demonstration of Thomas Edison's Vitascope, a motion picture projector that "was given its first public exhibition in this city ..."

A half-dozen shorts were shown. They included "Steamer Rosedale," "Baby Parade," "Toe Dance" and "a glove contest between two light-weight pugilists," according to the newspaper. The most titillating offering was "May Irwin's Kiss." It was the filmed recreation of a lingering stage smooch between the full-figured Irwin and her Broadway co-star, John C. Rice. The pair had appeared the previous year in a musical comedy called "The Widow Jones."

(What appears to be a shortened version of that cinema milestone can be seen on www.youtube.com. Search for "May Irwin Kiss.")

While the Bijou offered a traditional play as its principal attraction, the Avenue Theater on Fifth Avenue had built its variety show around a competing "cinematographe" program of 10 short films made by France's Lumiere Brothers.

"The pictures of active life thrown upon the canvas were thoroughly enjoyed by the audience," the Press reported. "The presentations were so lifelike as to be actually startling."

"Among the views was that of the Ninety-sixth French infantry on the march, charge of the French cavalry, a wrecked building scene, showing a falling wall and workmen carting away the debris, two scenes of infantile life and a view illustrative of the French method of drawing coke." There is no indication that Henry Clay Frick, the region's King of Coke, took in the program to see what his European competitors were up to.

Both Edison's Vitascope and the Lumieres' cinematographe used highly flammable celluloid film, and theater fires were common. The worst occurred the next year at a charity bazaar in Paris, and more than 100 people were killed.

Pittsburgh came close to having a similar tragedy on Nov. 25, 1903, at the Avenue Theater, which was managed by Harry Davis. "A celluloid film in a cinematograph machine ignited, and the blaze swept through the upper balcony in the rear of the auditorium," The Pittsburgh Gazette reported the next day. "Cool heads saved the lives and limbs of hundreds of people, and the intelligent work of the firemen confined the blaze to one corner of the building."

About 300 people were in the theater when the fire started. Projectionist George MacKenzie had just threaded the film for the second short into the projector when "the audience was startled by a sharp report and a vivid flash of blue light."

"Instantly the blaze caught the woodwork, and in a few seconds long tongues of red flame rolled up the wall and out of the window opening in Fifth Avenue.

"MacKenzie was burned about the face and hands and was so disabled that he was unable to fight the fire," the paper reported.

Things could have been much worse. "There was not the slightest semblance of the panic," according to the Pittsburgh Press's report on the blaze. "The lights were turned on and the spectators ... walked out ... quietly."

"So well was the work done that women stopped to put on their wraps and some stood with their checks at the cloak room while the fire engines were roaring down Fifth Avenue and the excited crowd in the street was shouting that 'the whole block was burning up.' "

The same theater was gutted in a second fire two years later, just a few weeks before Davis and Harris opened their Nickelodeon nearby.

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